Justice Advisory Group was built by people who understand what defendants and families actually face — not in theory, but from direct experience. We've navigated corporate crises, federal proceedings, addiction recovery, and the long road back. That's the foundation we bring to every client.
No one should face the most consequential moments of their life without someone in their corner who knows how the system actually works.
"The gap between knowing what's possible and knowing how to get there is exactly where JAG operates. We close that gap."
Sentence mitigation. Prison preparation. Early release strategy. Reentry planning. At every stage of the federal justice process, experience is the difference between a good outcome and a preventable bad one.
Steven Russo spent more than two decades as a C-level executive before his life took a turn that most corporate leaders never face: a federal criminal investigation, a guilty plea, and the full weight of the federal justice system. He emerged from that experience with something most consultants don't have — he's lived it.
That firsthand experience shapes everything about how he works. Steven knows what a federal presentence report actually feels like to read about yourself. He knows how acceptance of responsibility influences sentencing outcomes in ways that no textbook can teach. And he knows how to help defendants and families understand what's really ahead — clearly, honestly, and without the clinical distance that makes so many advisors useless in the moments that matter most.
Over four years of prison consulting, Steven has built a practice grounded in one principle: defendants who understand their situation, accept responsibility, and engage the right expertise early consistently achieve better outcomes. That isn't optimism — it's what the data shows.
Jason Gerner spent fifteen years building and running addiction recovery programs before co-founding JAG. As a former partner at a large recovery center, he worked with thousands of individuals navigating substance abuse treatment — people in crisis, people rebuilding, and people trying to understand a system that wasn't designed to be understood easily.
That background turns out to be exactly what federal prison consulting needs. A significant number of federal defendants have substance abuse histories that intersect directly with their cases, their sentencing, and their eligibility for programs like RDAP — the Residential Drug Abuse Program, which can reduce a federal sentence by up to 12 months. Knowing how to document a client's substance history, frame it appropriately in mitigation, and build a compelling RDAP eligibility case requires someone who actually understands addiction and recovery from the inside.
Jason brings clinical understanding, genuine compassion, and hard-won practical knowledge to every client he works with. For defendants and families dealing with both the legal system and underlying substance issues, having someone who speaks both languages isn't a nice-to-have — it's the difference.
The federal justice system is adversarial by design. Defense attorneys fight for legal outcomes. Prosecutors argue for punishment. Probation officers write reports. Judges decide. But almost no one in that process is focused solely on helping the defendant and their family understand what's actually happening, prepare effectively, and navigate the weeks, months, and years ahead.
That's the gap JAG was built to fill. Not as legal counsel — we're not attorneys — but as experienced advisors who can sit at the table with a family and tell them the truth: what matters, what doesn't, what's controllable, and what to do next. Federal prison consulting done right isn't cheerleading. It's hard, honest, expert work at the most consequential time in a person's life.
Steven and Jason built JAG because they've been on both sides of that conversation. They know what helps. They built this firm to deliver it.