Michael J. Bryant (born April 13, 1966) is a Canadian lawyer and former politician. He has been the CEO of Legal Aid BC since January 2022. Previously, he was executive director and general counsel for the Canadian Civil Liberties Association. Bryant was a Liberal member of the Legislative Assembly of Ontario, representing the downtown Toronto riding of St. Paul's from 1999 to 2009. He was a senior member of Dalton McGuinty's provincial cabinet, first as Attorney General, being the province's youngest-ever to hold that post, and subsequently as Minister of Aboriginal Affairs, Minister of Economic Development and Government House Leader. Bryant left provincial politics to take up the newly created post of chief executive officer of Invest Toronto, a municipal agency with a mandate to attract investment and facilitate economic development. An altercation with a cyclist in 2009 led to Bryant being charged for the cyclist's death; the charges were withdrawn in 2010. Background Bryant was raised in the Greater Victoria area of British Columbia, where his father Ray was mayor of Esquimalt from 1966 to 1969. Known for his "pugnacious streak", he trained as a boxer from childhood. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of British Columbia in 1988, and a Master's degree from the same institution in 1989. Bryant was also a member of the Sigma Chi fraternity at UBC. He graduated as in 1992 from Osgoode Hall Law School at York University in Toronto with a law degree. and was the silver medalist of his year. He then earned an LL.M. magna cum laude from Harvard Law School in 1994. Bryant is a Fulbright Fellow. He clerked at the Supreme Court of Canada in 1992–93, and was later a lawyer at the firm of Sullivan & Cromwell in New York City, as well as lecturing in law at King's College London in England, and practicing litigation at McCarthy Tétrault. In 1997, he became an adjunct professor in international law at the Department of Political Science at the University of Toronto. Bryant was married to Susan Abramovitch, an entertainment lawyer, and they have two children, Sadie and Louis. The couple separated in December 2010. Politics Bryant was elected to the Ontario legislature in the provincial election of 1999, defeating incumbent Progressive Conservative cabinet minister Isabel Bassett in St. Paul's by almost 5,000 votes. Earlier, Bryant became the Liberal Party's nominee by defeating future premier