Beloved Clark County attorney, cookie baker and lobbyist dies

Former Chief Deputy District Attorney Ben Graham has died, District Court announced in a statement Friday afternoon.

“Ben was an integral figure in promoting the health and well-being of lawyers,” Chief District Judge Linda Bell wrote in the statement. “Ben also participated in numerous charitable efforts that improved the lives of others in the Clark County community.”

Bell extended her condolences to Graham’s wife, Elana, his children, grandchildren and other family.

Graham, a Washington native, moved to Las Vegas in 1977 and worked for 31 years, retiring as chief deputy district attorney. For two decades he worked with the Legislature on behalf of the Nevada District Attorneys Association, law enforcement and the legal community, according to a faculty page on the Nevada Appellate Courts website.

He taught law classes in Las Vegas for about 29 years and most recently served as the governmental adviser to the Nevada Judiciary, the faculty page said.

Bell said Graham was known to bring in “the world’s best chocolate chip cookies.”

In an interview with the Review-Journal in 2004, Graham said he and his wife bake about 8,000 cookies in their northwest Las Vegas kitchen each December and give them away free at the courthouse.

“They’re the type of cookie that can bring on a sense of Christmas nirvana, the kind that, diet be damned, you’ve got to eat just one more, and one more, and one more,” Review-Journal reporter Glenn Puit wrote at the time. Several other attorneys and judges raved in the article.

“We do it because we love ya,” Ben Graham said at the time. “The community has been very, very generous. It’s a very giving, very loving community, and we are so blessed.”

Contact Sabrina Schnur at sschnur@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0278. Follow @sabrina_schnur on Twitter.