Greyson Lambert, UGA Law School grad, on record day vs. Gamecocks and post football life

The clerk’s name for the Georgia Statewide Business Court that popped up on a Zoom conference rang familiar to a lawyer who had logged in.

Greyson Lambert? The same Greyson Lambert that started at quarterback for Georgia?

“Greyson might as well have fallen out of his chair,” said Judge Walt Davis, who hired Lambert to work  for him.

“Those kind of things made him uncomfortable,” said Lynette Jimenez, the court’s senior staff attorney. “He is so down to earth, so humble about it which is why we would rib him about it. It made it more fun.”

No wonder those that worked with Lambert in the court’s Atlanta offices referred to him as “QB1.”

“Just to tweak him because it drove him crazy,” Davis said.

Mark Richt’s last starting quarterback and Kirby Smart’s first quietly spent three years at UGA Law school after giving pro baseball a go.

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Now, seven years after he set an NCAA record he still holds for best completion percentage in a single game against South Carolina, Lambert is getting ready to start a new job next month in midtown Atlanta at Jones Day, an international law firm where Davis was previously a partner.

“Just about any time they recognize me, they bring that game up,” Lambert said. “Obviously, that feels great. It just reminds me of that team, those coaches and kind of the game plan. All the things that had to go well in order for that to happen.”

Lambert, who started at Virginia in 2014 and left as a graduate transfer, earned a master’s degree from UGA in December of 2016 in sports management.

He got a call from the MLB Texas Rangers who wanted Lambert to pitch in the organization.

He hit 90 miles per hour on the second pitch at a tryout in Atlanta and spent a season working in rookie ball in Surprise, Ariz., the first time he played baseball since his freshman year at Wayne County High. Lambert pitched in two instructional league games, but knew he was raw and decided he didn’t want to spend several years seeking a chance to reach the big leagues.

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He decided to pursue a career as an attorney.

“A lot of that was I thought some of what I did on the field in terms of decision-making, the intangibles-- more than the soft and hard skills—that you get from being a quarterback in college can really translate well in the legal profession,” he said. “Not just from a leadership and teamwork aspect but how you make quick educated decisions.”

Lambert entered law school at UGA in the fall of 2018 and graduated in the spring of 2021. He took online classes the third year of law school from Atlanta while externing for Judge William Ray of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia.

The guy who started 13 games at Georgia and threw 12 touchdowns with 2 interceptions was recognized by some who mentioned his football connection in an initial conversation. Others had no clue who he was.

He was so focused on law school that he only went to one football game while there—the Notre Dame home game in 2019. He kept tabs on TV of his former team.

“It was definitely a good, solid student experience which is kind of the first time I was able to experience that,” he said. “In some ways, it was refreshing.”

Law degrees run in the family with wife Adeline Kenerly Lambert a year ahead of Greyson in law school. She is also an attorney who does remote work for a firm part-time.

“She’s way smarter than I am,” Lambert said of Adeline who was a majorette at Georgia and Miss Georgia 2015.

Appropriately enough, Greyson proposed to his hometown sweetheart—they grew up in Jesup, went to the fifth grade dance together and dated in high school--in front of the UGA Law School Library on Oct. 13, 2018, the same day Georgia lost big at LSU.

They have an 11-month old son, Lock Sullivan,

Lambert, now 28, wants to practice law that deals with transactional work--mergers and acquisitions.  As one of two term clerks in the two-year statewide business court, Lambert tracked cases, researched issues, drafted proposed orders and attended court proceedings on complex commercial litigation, Jimenez said.

It might be a contract dispute or allegations of misappropriating funds.

“I didn’t think he’d be so embroiled in restrictive covenants analysis,” Jimenez said. “He has no doubt become an expert in that area of the law.”

The South Carolina game from 2015 is still in the NCAA record books for completion percentage of at least 20 completions.

He was 24 of 25 for 330 yards and 3 touchdowns in a 52-20 rout of Steve Spurrier and the Gamecocks. He set a school record by completing his last 20 passes in a row, topping 19 in a row by Mike Bobo in the 1998 Outback Bowl.

Malcolm Mitchell caught 8 of those passes for 122 yards and a touchdown.

“I remember Reggie (Davis) got popped on the sideline and there was targeting,” Lambert said. “Malcolm Mitchell having a back-shoulder ball where I leave it a little bit inside and him going over the top of a guy and catching it. The effort and ability for all of them to hang on for that to happen was pretty incredible.”

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The lone incompletion came early in the game. It was intended for tight end Jeb Blazevich on a seam route in the end zone with Mitchell coming underneath.

“Still to this day, I have Malcolm Mitchell wide open on a shallow cross where he might get in if I hit him and I’m like, man, it could have been 25 for 25 if I didn’t throw it away,” Lambert said. “Yeah, it was a throwaway in the back of the end zone.”

Georgia ended up going 10-3 in 2015 with Lambert being replaced by third-stringer Faton Bauta for the Florida game, a 27-3 loss. Richt was fired the day after the regular season ended.

“I love Coach Richt and I also loved getting to play for Kirby his first year and seeing kind of that transition,” Lambert said. “Obviously we wish certain things around the 2015 season could have gone differently. We started off pretty hot and we ran against a buzzsaw against Alabama and the monsoon (a 38-10 loss after a 4-0 start to season). They went on to win the national title. We lose (Nick) Chubb which obviously was such a huge blow the first play of the Tennessee game. At that time we were very confident that we would see Alabama again.”

That 38-31 loss in Knoxville “still to this day gives me nightmares. You always go back and kind of run through these games in your head….It’s one of those things for our fans, our team and those players, coming in especially as a transfer quarterback, you want to win everything for those guys.”

Lambert said he watches former Georgia teammates including Chubb now on Sundays.

Lambert and his father were at the Georgia-Oregon game in Atlanta and saw Bennett go 25 of 31 for 368 yards.

“Stetson played out of his mind,” Lambert said. “The whole offense did.”

Lambert’s hometown of Jesup is about 30 miles from Bennett’s hometown of Blackshear.

Lambert went to dinner with Stetson and his father at Last Resort in Athens before Bennett decided to walk-on to Georgia before the 2017 season or take smaller school offers.

“Dealing with all of what he’s dealt with as the starting quarterback and staying true to who he is and being able to fight through all of that adversity and coming through on the other side, he’s the man,” Lambert said. “I’m really proud of him and happy what he’s been able to accomplish.”

Lambert’s football past will no doubt be brought up as he embarks on his law career.

In a large TV at the court offices, Davis had fun pulling up a photo of a floppy-haired Lambert from his early high school days and some of his YouTube highlights from back in those days.

“Greyson gave me a going away present, a signed Nick Chubb football,” Davis said. “I said where’s my signed Greyson Lambert football?”

This article originally appeared on Athens Banner-Herald: Former Georgia football quarterback Greyson Lambert on record game