Wayde Byard: LCPS Perjury Charge, Trial Acquittal, and Book

Wayde Byard, the longtime spokesman for Loudoun County Public Schools, was acquitted of felony perjury in June 2023 after a Virginia jury deliberated for roughly 90 minutes. The Wayde Byard perjury case grew out of a special grand jury convened by Attorney General Jason Miyares to investigate how the school district handled two 2021 student sexual assaults, and it ended with no conviction against either person the grand jury indicted.

What the Perjury Charge Was About

Byard was indicted on December 12, 2022, on one felony count of perjury.¹ The charge turned on a narrow question: when did he find out that the May 2021 incident at Stone Bridge High School was a sexual assault?

Testifying before the special grand jury, Byard said he did not learn about the assault until months after it happened. He described what he understood about the May 2021 incident at the time as a “boy-girl incident that went sideways.”²³ Prosecutors said that statement was false.

LCPS placed Byard on unpaid leave immediately after the indictment.⁴

The Evidence Against Him

The prosecution’s case was circumstantial. No email or document showed Byard being told in writing that the Stone Bridge incident was a sexual assault, and both sides acknowledged that at trial.² Instead, prosecutors leaned on four strands of evidence suggesting Byard knew more than he had admitted:

Stone Bridge Principal Tim Flynn testified that he called Byard on the day of the May 2021 assault and told him about the allegation.²
That same day, Byard helped draft a note Flynn sent to parents. The note mentioned a disruption involving the victim’s father but said nothing about an assault.⁵
In July 2021, the victim’s mother went to the LCPS administration building asking for an incident report. Byard reportedly met her in the lobby and directed her to the sheriff’s office.⁵
Two days after the October 2021 assault at Broad Run High School, a Daily Wire reporter emailed Byard saying the Broad Run incident involved the same student from Stone Bridge.⁵

The Rejected Plea and the Defense

Before trial, prosecutors offered Byard a deal: plead guilty to a misdemeanor count of making a false statement, pay a $100 fine, and wait two years for sentencing. He and his attorney, Jennifer Leffler, turned it down.⁶

Leffler argued that Byard was a “fall guy” in a politically driven prosecution, that Principal Flynn had likely confused the timing of what he conveyed and when, and that no documents backed up the state’s theory. She also told the court that administrators at the time genuinely believed the Stone Bridge matter was a relationship dispute rather than a sexual assault, consistent with how Byard had described it.³ On a motion to dismiss, the defense argued the state’s case rested on a single witness without sufficient corroboration to sustain a perjury conviction.⁷ Byard did not take the stand.

Trial and Verdict

The three-day trial was held in Loudoun County Circuit Court before Judge Douglas L. Fleming Jr. and concluded on June 22, 2023. The jury, made up of four women and eight men, deliberated for about 90 minutes before returning a verdict of not guilty.³

Speaking to reporters afterward, Byard said he was relieved rather than happy. “I’m not going to put any more quarters in the outrage machine,” he said.⁸

What Happened After the Acquittal

Byard returned to work at LCPS on July 6, 2023, two weeks after the verdict. Under Virginia law, a reinstated public school employee is entitled to all unpaid salary with interest, and the district acknowledged that obligation. He did not resume his old role as the division’s public face, however. He was assigned instead to a communications supervisor position handling special projects, under an agreement with LCPS leadership that he would no longer serve as spokesman.⁴⁶

He officially retired from the school system on December 15, 2023.⁹

How the Case Fit the Larger Investigation

Byard was one of two people the special grand jury indicted. Former Superintendent Scott Ziegler was charged with three misdemeanors.¹ The grand jury’s December 2022 report was sharply critical of LCPS, concluding the district “failed at every juncture,” but it also found “no evidence of criminal conduct on the part of anyone within LCPS.”¹⁰

Ziegler’s cases also collapsed. He was convicted in September 2023 of a misdemeanor involving the retaliatory non-renewal of a teacher’s contract, but Judge Fleming set that conviction aside in March 2024 because of faulty jury instructions and ordered a new trial.¹¹ A second charge had been dismissed in December 2023. On January 16, 2025, prosecutors from the Attorney General’s office asked Fleming to drop the final remaining charge, and he did. The dismissal came after a $1 million civil suit by the teacher, Erin Brooks, was settled in November 2024.¹² Ziegler called the prosecution “politically motivated.”¹³

The special grand jury investigation produced zero convictions against either defendant it indicted.¹²

Byard’s Own Account

In October 2024, Byard published a book about his years at LCPS, The Battle for Loudoun County: Inside the Culture War Between a “Woke” School Board and the Radical Right in America’s Wealthiest Suburb, through Amplify Publishing Group.¹⁴

He denied that LCPS had engaged in any deliberate cover-up of the sexual assaults, while acknowledging that the school system, the sheriff’s office, and other agencies had failed to communicate effectively. On his own trial, Byard told WTOP that his name “was barely mentioned” during the proceedings and that he felt like “a spectator at my own trial.”⁶ He said he wrote the book because he wanted a record of “what really happened.”¹⁵

1
NBC Washington. Former Loudoun County Superintendent Indicted by Special Grand Jury
2
Fox 5 DC. Day 2 of Trial for Loudoun County School Spokesman Charged With Perjury
3
Courthouse News Service. School Administrator Targeted in Virginia’s Probe Acquitted of Perjury Charge
4
Loudoun Now. Byard Is Back With School Division
5
Loudoun Now. Byard Told Grand Jury He Learned of Sexual Assaults Months Later, Netting Perjury Charge
6
WTOP. Acquitted of Perjury, Longtime Loudoun Co. Schools Spokesman Has New Book on School Culture War
7
WJLA. Loudoun County Public Schools Spokesperson Wayde Byard Trial Second Day
8
NBC Washington. Loudoun County Schools Spokesman Found Not Guilty of Perjury
9
Fox 5 DC. Former Loudoun County Spokesperson Wayde Byard Retires Months After Resuming Job Following Perjury Trial
10
Fox 5 DC. Report on Loudoun County Public Schools Released Following Special Grand Jury Investigation
11
WTOP. Final Charge Dropped Against Fired LCPS Superintendent
12
Loudoun Times. Prosecution of Former LCPS Superintendent Over
13
NBC Washington. Virginia AG Drops Case That Accused Ex-Superintendent of Firing Teacher in Retaliation
14
Amplify Publishing Group. Wayde B. Byard
15
Northern Virginia Magazine. Former LCPS Spokesman Wayde Byard, Acquitted of Perjury, Releases New Book