Bracken McKey spent 25 years working as a deputy district attorney, the last several as Chief Deputy District Attorney for Washington County, prosecuting some of Oregon’s most serious criminal cases before leaving public service to open his own firm. His career — built on preparation, collaboration, and legal precision — left a lasting mark on how crime is addressed across the region.
The Foundation of a Long Career
Eastern Oregon produces a particular kind of person. Communities like Pendleton operate on proximity and accountability — everyone knows what you do and how you do it. Bracken McKey grew up in that environment, spending his early years on the water and in the mountains, skiing with family, and learning the rhythms of a small city where reputation is not abstract. It is simply what people say about you when you are not in the room.
That early foundation shaped the kind of attorney McKey would become. Not flashy. Not promotional. Methodical.
He attended Walla Walla Valley Academy, then Walla Walla University in Washington, before earning admission to Willamette University College of Law on an academic scholarship. In his final year, he was elected 3L class president—a role he has described as his first real test in leading without ego, focused on moving people forward rather than winning arguments.
He passed the Oregon State Bar in 1998 and began his career immediately.
Into Washington County’s Major Crimes Team
McKey joined the Washington County District Attorney’s Office as a Deputy District Attorney in 1998. The work was demanding and high-stakes from the beginning. Over the following years, he built a track record handling serious felony cases and was promoted to Senior Deputy District Attorney in 2007.
By that point, he had begun managing some of the region’s most closely watched prosecutions—cases where the difference between conviction and acquittal often came down to how thoroughly the record had been constructed and how well the evidence had been presented to a jury.
One case that drew statewide attention was the prosecution of Cinthya Garcia-Cisneros, who struck and killed two young sisters at a park in Forest Grove in 2012. McKey’s involvement in that case—and in the legislative effort that followed—became a defining chapter in his public service career. The prosecution exposed a gap in Oregon’s hit-and-run statute and helped prompt legislative action. In 2018, the Governor signed Anna and Abigail’s Law, closing the loophole that had allowed drivers who struck pedestrians outside of a roadway to avoid the most serious hit-and-run charges.
The case illustrated what McKey had come to believe about prosecution: that the work inside the courtroom is inseparable from the consequences it produces outside of it.
Building the Record on High-Profile Cases
Over more than two decades on the Major Crimes Team, McKey’s caseload included some of the most serious criminal matters Washington County has prosecuted. The volume and gravity of that work is documented in public record.
In 2023 alone, McKey prosecuted Billy Lee Oatney—securing a murder conviction for the second time in the 1996 death and sexual assault of Susi Larsen. In the same year, he prosecuted Dante Halling, who was sentenced to 540 months for the attempted murder of six Washington County Sheriff’s Deputies. Herbert James Rabago was found guilty of murder in June 2023. Bryan Andrew Aguilera was convicted of attempted murder for a stranger assault.
Earlier cases added to that record. Martin Allen Johnson was convicted in 2019 for the 1998 murder of 15-year-old Heather Fraser—a cold case prosecution that required reconstructing a decades-old crime in front of a modern jury. Gabriel Moscote-Saavedra was convicted on multiple counts in a sexual assault case in 2019. Norbeto Nestor Muniz Jr. was convicted of murder in 2022. Robert Wade Jackson was sentenced to 25 years for attempted murder the same year.
The breadth of that casework—murder, attempted murder, sexual assault, hit-and-run, armed robbery, assault on law enforcement—represents a rare accumulation of trial experience in Oregon’s criminal justice system.
Recognition Across Industries
Not all of McKey’s most significant work fit neatly into a single category. Two of his awards reflect a career that extended into cross-sector collaboration.
In 2009, he received the Recording Industry Association of America Gold Record Law Enforcement Award, recognizing his work on intellectual property crime cases requiring coordination between law enforcement and private industry. In 2014, he received the Oregon Construction Industry Crime Prevention Law Enforcement Partner Award—acknowledging his contribution to building the kind of multi-agency partnership that reduces crime without waiting for new legislation.
These recognitions point to something consistent throughout his career: a willingness to approach problems that do not fit standard prosecutorial templates, and to build working relationships outside the courthouse when the case required it.
The Leadership Years
In 2019, McKey was named Chief Deputy District Attorney for Washington County. The role shifted his responsibilities significantly. He was now responsible for shaping how the office operated — guiding teams, setting standards, and ensuring consistency across a large volume of serious cases.
The transition from courtroom advocate to institutional leader is not automatic. Many skilled litigators find management uncomfortable. McKey has described that shift as a change in what success looked like: from solving problems directly to building the conditions that allow others to solve them.
He remained in that role until 2024, completing 26 years of continuous public service in Washington County.
The Move to Private Practice
When McKey left the DA’s Office, he moved directly into private practice. He is now the owner and lead attorney at McKey Law in Washington County, where he practices criminal defense and personal injury law.
The transition carries a particular quality that clients in both practice areas can draw on. A former Chief Deputy District Attorney who spent decades constructing the prosecution’s case now represents clients who are on the other side of that process. The institutional knowledge does not disappear when an attorney changes roles. It becomes the foundation of a different kind of service.
McKey has noted that having seen how decisions play out over time — across hundreds of serious cases and the full arc of a criminal justice career — gives his clients a clearer picture of what they are facing and what the path forward actually looks like.
Outside the Office
Throughout his career, McKey maintained the balance that his upbringing in Pendleton seemed to instill early. He remained involved in his sons’ baseball teams—a consistent presence in their athletic lives that grounded his schedule in something entirely separate from the demands of major felony prosecution.
He continued to waterski and snow ski, activities he has described as the best way to clear his thinking and return to work with focus intact. The Oregon Coast and Maui have remained his preferred destinations when the calendar allows.
That commitment to life outside of work is not incidental to how McKey describes his career. It is part of how he explains what sustained it.
Bracken McKey and the Long View
The shape of Bracken McKey’s career is not defined by any single case, though several of them carry genuine historical weight in Washington County’s legal record. What defines it is something harder to compress: the accumulated discipline of doing serious work, carefully, for a very long time.
Twenty-six years of major crimes prosecution produces a specific kind of knowledge. It produces an understanding of how evidence degrades, how witnesses remember, how juries reason, how sentencing plays out, and how cases with similar facts can end in opposite outcomes depending on preparation.
McKey carries that knowledge into private practice. For clients navigating the criminal justice system in Oregon — whether facing charges or pursuing a personal injury claim — the attorney across the table has seen more of that system than most.
That is the edge a career like his builds. And it is not the kind that fades when the title changes.
