Then & Now: Eldridge’s career defined by legal, bank, government work

Law, banking, and government have kept Conner Eldridge busy and fulfilled throughout his career, focusing on areas where he believes he can make a difference.

“Growing up in small-town Arkansas, I was exposed to business and law from all sides of my family and saw law as a way to make a difference in small-town Arkansas as well as in big ways that impacted the country and the world,” he said. “I couldn’t have envisioned then the different paths I would take. But looking back they made sense, and I’ve gone between the true legal practice of the law world, the business of the banking world and the political, governmental world.”

Raised in Lonoke and Augusta, Eldridge graduated with an English degree from Davidson College in North Carolina in 1999. He worked for U.S. Rep. Marion Berry, D-Gillett, and U.S. Sen. Blanche Lincoln, D-Ark., before earning his law degree from the University of Arkansas in 2003. Then he clerked for U.S. District Judge G. Thomas Eisele for a year.

In 2004 family connections led him to Summit Bank in Arkadelphia, where he became CEO in 2008. “I got to do everything in a small, growing community bank,” he said. “And we weren’t small by the time I left.”

In 2010, at 33, he became the U.S. prosecuting attorney for the Western District of Arkansas with the U.S. Department of Justice – the youngest U.S. attorney in the country.

“I loved that job,” Eldridge said, which included “prosecuting really bad folks, pedophiles and others, and trying to make many places in Arkansas safer.”

A 2013 Northwest Arkansas Business Journal’s Forty Under 40 class honoree, Eldridge decided to “do something I always wanted to do” and run for the U.S. Senate in 2016.

“I still believe deeply in running for office and serving in office as a way to make a difference. Unfortunately, we came up short.”

Eldridge again focused on law, partnering with Steve Brooks, to start Eldridge Brooks Partners in Rogers in 2018. With 10 lawyers and offices in Northwest Arkansas and Tulsa, the firm primarily focuses on business and corporate law.

“We’re small enough that if we want to take a pro bono matter, we can. I try to use my experience in federal government and federal and state prosecution to selectively take on things in those areas as well,” Eldridge said.

He also does pro bono work for multiple immigration cases for the Hispanic community.

In January, Eldridge “came full circle” and got back into community banking, leading Rogers-based holding company Oak Tree Financial Corp. to acquire Riverside Bank, which has branches in Little Rock and Sparkman (Dallas County). Eldridge is chairman and CEO of Oak Tree and Riverside. He’ll continue practicing law with Eldridge Brooks.

“Our plan is to grow that bank and over time have a strong presence in Northwest Arkansas,” he said. “We’ve also done real estate investing. Buying Village on the Creeks is the biggest one.”

Eldridge continues to “keep my eyes on what’s going on in the state and the world and make a difference in those ways. I still have friends from the Obama administration and in government that like to watch what’s going on and talk about what, if anything, we can do to make a constructive difference with the issues unfolding in Washington and locally, particularly in the Department of Justice,” he said.

To “engage the creative part of his brain,” Eldridge reads fiction and history, because he’s learned “to always be doing something different from my primary job, because you can easily get so focused in your primary project that you don’t take on something new and keep learning and keep thinking in different ways.”

As for the future, Eldridge continues “to wake up every day and make a difference in the legal world, the business world and the political/government world. These three still matter, and obviously we live in an uncertain time, a disruptive time, but we have to believe that if we wake up every day and try to do the right things in the ways that we can, that it’s going to make a difference.”