BROWNSVILLE – When a 16-year career as Edmonson County attorney ended with an election defeat three years ago, Greg Vincent was able to transition and stake out a nice career for himself heading his own private law practice.

After the candidate who unseated him was appointed to a judgeship, though, county officials were quick to reach out to Vincent and ask him to resume his former office.

Since being sworn in as county attorney in February, Vincent has settled back into a role that many had been accustomed to seeing, although his time out of office allowed him to take on the familiar responsibilities with a fresh perspective.

“I’m very humbled by the faith and the trust in me that people have shown,” said Vincent, who grew up in Edmonson County, graduated from Western Kentucky University and earned his law degree from the University of Kentucky.

From an early age, a career in law seemed to be a natural outcome for Vincent, who was enthralled as a youth by reruns of “Perry Mason,” the seminal TV courtroom drama.

Vincent had practiced privately in Hopkins County before moving on to become an assistant commonwealth’s attorney in Allen and Simpson counties when he was contacted by Gary Logsdon, a longtime attorney practicing in Brownsville who invited him to work at his firm.

“He’s a brilliant trial attorney, an aggressive advocate for his causes, a very well-trained lawyer who’s willing to work whatever hours it takes,” Logsdon said. “We’re very fortunate to have Mr. Vincent as our county attorney.”

Far-ranging changes to the state worker’s compensation law in 1996 had the effect of greatly reducing the worker’s comp caseload at Logsdon’s office, forcing him to cut staff.

Vincent was one of the casualties, but he rebounded in 1998 when he was elected to his first term as county attorney, having just turned 30.

At that time, he was not quite a decade removed from a different brand of notoriety, earned when he spent his sophomore and junior years at WKU as school mascot Big Red.

Vincent, who also wore the Wildcat mascot costume at Edmonson County High School, relished the opportunity to try out for Big Red, and can laugh now as he recalled being chased off the court, in costume, by a dog that had somehow gotten loose during a WKU women’s basketball game.

“I had the experience of putting on something oversized and taking on another character’s role,” said Vincent, who displays his two WKU varsity letters at his office. “I wore that thing to I don’t know how many catfish festivals and parades.”

Vincent took to the responsibilities of public office quickly, proving adept at handling a sizable district court caseload and being the county’s legal representative at fiscal court meetings.

Edmonson County Judge-Executive Wil Cannon had many opportunities to work with Vincent in a law enforcement capacity, both as a Kentucky State Police trooper and later as Edmonson County sheriff.

Cannon said Vincent’s work early in his tenure at successfully prosecuting impaired driving cases made a good impression.

“He’s generous, works hard, starts early and works late,” Cannon said. “I’ve been to his house in the middle of the night getting a search warrant, and I know that’s rough on his family but he will type a search warrant in the middle of the night and never complain.”

Cannon was elected judge-executive in 2014, the same year that Vincent was ousted by J.B. Hines in his Republican primary campaign for a fifth term.

Vincent said he grew to appreciate the less demanding hours of private law practice in the years since, and that experience helps drive his approach as a county attorney today, a position he accepted after Hines was appointed earlier this year to become a district judge.

“Every prosecutor for the government should spend at least one year defending people, because they’ll never look at their cases the same way again,” Vincent said. “You take an oath to uphold justice, and to do that you need to weigh the sanction with the actual crime and look to do something that works for everybody.”

During his first tenure as county attorney, Vincent handled all the legal work himself, with secretaries assuming other responsibilities of the office.

With the benefit of experience, Vincent retained the assistant county attorney under Hines to handle juvenile, child support and abuse/neglect cases, allowing Vincent to focus on prosecutions and fiscal court business.

That workload means that people typically come to him to settle any number of disputes, whether it involves a couple with domestic problems, someone complaining about a neighbor or a person who has issues with a county tax bill.

“I don’t get people walking into my office on a good day. I see people at their worst and most stressed,” Vincent said. “I try to figure out what it takes to make their lives better.”

“I don’t get people walking into my office on a good day. I see people at their worst and most stressed,” Edmonson County Attorney Greg Vincent said. “I try to figure out what it takes to make their lives better.”