About John Ryan
John Ryan served for more than five years as a prosecutor with the Yellowstone County Attorney's Office, where he handled a challenging caseload of high-profile felony cases. In a span of three and a half years, he prosecuted 17 major felony cases to jury trial, most involving sexual abuse or homicide, and obtained 16 convictions. He was a member of the Special Victims Unit and served two years as the lead crash attorney for Yellowstone County. A fifth-generation Montana native, John put himself through college and law school.
He earned his bachelor's degree from Sacramento State University and received a scholarship to the University of Minnesota Law School, where he graduated in 2014. He made the Dean's List, participated in moot court, and was a student representative to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Doha, Qatar. After law school, he worked as an advocate for ranchers and farmers with the Western Organization of Resource Councils, and clerked for the Hon. Donald L. Harris of the Montana 13th Judicial District Court from 2019 to 2020 before joining Heenan & Cook.
Proven verdicts and settlements at Heenan & Cook Injury and Accident Attorneys
These results are credited to Heenan & Cook Injury and Accident Attorneys. A result appears under an attorney's own name only when a published source names them as counsel on the case.
At CoreCivic's Crossroads Correctional Center in Shelby, Montana, an inmate serving a double life sentence let himself out of his own locked pod and into Nathaniel Lake's, then beat and choked him for more than three and a half minutes with no staff intervention. Lake was in a coma for 33 days and has a permanent brain injury.
A federal jury awarded $15 million to two families whose loved ones died at Canyon Creek Memory Care during a 2020 COVID-19 outbreak, finding the Billings facility and its parent company Koelsch Senior Communities liable for neglect through chronic understaffing.
Heenan and Cook secured a $9 million settlement from Custer County District High School on behalf of 32 former student athletes who were sexually abused over decades by longtime school athletic trainer James 'Doc' Jensen.
In 2015 a woman on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation called authorities because she was worried someone might be drinking and driving. The Bureau of Indian Affairs officer who responded assaulted her. A federal judge fixed damages at $1.6 million in 2020, and after nearly a decade of litigation over whether the United States was responsible, ordered it to pay in 2025.
A federal jury found that a North Dakota debt-collection law firm violated the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act by filing and pursuing a credit card lawsuit it knew was barred by Montana's statute of limitations, awarding Timothy McCollough $311,000 in statutory, emotional distress, and punitive damages.
Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. Each case is unique and depends on its own facts.
