Entertainment law to Flash games — they said it was crap, then it paid — to artificial intelligence. For thirty years, Justin Kennedy has bet on the future before the crowd arrived. Now he builds with AI the way he built everything else: early, and built to last.
Most people get one "ahead of its time" in a lifetime. Justin Kennedy has four. In the dot-com era, he built an online casino in Flash before the world was ready — then turned the wreckage into an advergame empire for Cartoon Network, FedEx, Adult Swim, and Canon. He made a web series before web series were a thing. He talked about animation with Neo-Soul artists twenty years before the technology could deliver it.
Now the technology has caught up — and he's already there. The bet is the same one he's always made: see the vehicle before the road is built.
"Everybody thought it was crap." Then Cartoon Network's #1 game for two years. Macromedia Site of the Month. Millions in ad revenue. 120+ training games for Canon.
Mentored by legendary attorney Paul Marshall. Trusted by Stevie Wonder, Mary J. Blige, DMX, Foxy Brown. The man in the room when it mattered.
The same instinct, the new medium. AI media production, workflow automation, and training — built by the man who has never waited for permission to build.
The names above aren't a logo wall. Every one of them is a story — a room Justin was in, a call he got, a moment he was trusted with. Three eras of them:
They said Flash games were crap. Then the biggest brands on earth started calling.
Cartoon Network made its biggest-ever investment in a game when it hired the Kennedys: Batman against the Penguin's Robo-Penguin army, built in a three-month sprint. It became the network's most popular game for two straight years and topped the fan-requested chart. The "crap" everybody laughed at was a goldmine.
#1 game on Cartoon Network, 2 years running.
FedEx trusted the Kennedys with the biggest shipping season of the year — Christmas 2004 — and a game built to dominate the online market. It was selected as Macromedia's Site of the Month and showcased on the Macromedia homepage. When the biggest logistics company on earth calls, you're not making novelties anymore.
Macromedia Site of the Month.
Adult Swim commissioned "Break Fight" to promote Samurai Champloo — and the game earned millions in ad revenue. It was also the first corporate project where the Kennedys produced all the music themselves. The musician had snuck back in through the games.
Millions in ad revenue.
Canon's Consumer Imaging Group hired the Kennedys to turn sales training into games for independent reps at top retailers. Justin delivered more than 120 of them — easier than the Batman game, at the same price points. It was the press coverage of the games that brought Canon calling in the first place.
120+ games shipped.
In 2003, New York's biggest radio station wanted to grow its audience online. The Kennedys built a fast-paced game around DJ Romeo — featuring the first digital DJ — and it pulled a million hits a month. It was still going strong two years later. He doesn't make campaigns; he makes things that keep working.
1M hits/month, 2+ years.
Friends with The Roots through Tina Farris, Justin knew they were politically active — and that election season meant an audience. During the 2004 Kerry race he built a Flash game with the band encouraging fans to get out and vote. It also sparked a twenty-year conversation with Tina about animation and Neo-Soul artists. The technology wasn't there yet. In Justin's words: "And now it is. Now it is."
The vision was right; the timing is now.
In 1999, Carmen led the technology team at Urban Box Office — Damon Jackson's New York hip-hop media company, backed by $25 million in venture capital and built to be a creative, tech-savvy powerhouse. It was an inspiring, high-pressure room, and it's where the Kennedy way of building digital media at scale was forged.
$25M in venture capital. Carmen ran the tech.
As a producer at Funny Garbage, Carmen collaborated with teams at Cartoon Network, Comedy Central, and Adult Swim across games, animation, website design, and content systems. She delivered monthly digital media for cartoonnetwork.com and produced award-winning games that helped grow the site to 1.9 million monthly visitors. She runs the technical and protects the creative — then and now.
1.9M monthly visitors.
Nick Jr. didn't just make games for its own site — it produced media for its advertising partners, and it hired the Kennedys to build them. Working alongside the Nick Jr. production team, they turned sponsor messages into games kids actually wanted to play. Even the ads were built like hits.
Sponsor games, built to be played.
When Random House wanted to put its STCK book in front of a younger audience, it came to the Kennedys. They built an animation-supported Hangman game with original music, and the publisher used it to boost sales and carry the STCK brand online and off. A book, sold with a game.
A book, sold with a game.
The Boys & Girls Clubs of the Virginia Peninsula give more than 5,000 local children a safe, welcoming place to grow — life-improving programs and character-building experiences. When that mission needed funding, the Kennedys created the video commercials to raise it. Big-league media skills, aimed at the kids in their own backyard.
5,000+ kids. One hometown.
Mentored by Paul Marshall. Trusted in the rooms where culture gets made.
Justin learned the business at the side of Paul Marshall, the legendary entertainment attorney whose roster read like a hall of fame: Whitney Houston, Mary J. Blige, Neil Diamond, James Brown, Jimi Hendrix, KISS, LL Cool J, Heavy D — and counsel for Woodstock. Marshall's Beatles chapter came before the fame: in 1963, as EMI's representative, he placed the band's first three records with Vee-Jay. Working in Marshall's New York firm, Justin absorbed how the greats were protected — and how deals actually get done.
Learned at the feet of a legend.
Introduced by Phynjuar to Stevie's daughter Aisha Morris, Justin became a friend of the family — events, dinners, travel. Stevie took a personal interest in the young attorney and encouraged him to stay in the Word of God; he was on the phone the day Justin bought his first study Bible, a thread that runs straight to Justin's church work today. Through Aisha and Tina Farris, Justin helped manifest a listening party at Stevie's Alpine, NJ home — Jazmine Sullivan, Music Soulchild, and Kendrick performing toward Stevie's record-label vision.
Trusted by a legend around his daughter.
It began with grunt work at a New Jersey firm — a young attorney going to court for her parking tickets. Under Paul Marshall in New York, Justin became the lawyer reviewing her contracts and negotiating her sponsor deals. They became genuine friends, and decades later he stays close to the family, talking with her sister Latanya and her husband Zennis to this day.
Parking tickets to sponsorships.
Justin formally represented Neo-Soul artist Amel Larrieux — handling deals for her and her husband-producer Laru — after befriending her through Tina Farris. When Prince invited her to perform at Paisley Park, Justin went along as her trusted buffer: the gift-of-gab lawyer who put a reserved artist at ease in a room with Prince and George Clinton. Aisha Morris coached him before he walked in. Prince was Justin's idol, the one artist he was a genuine fan of — and for one night, the fan became a peer.
In the temple, as family.
As Justin built his name as an entertainment attorney, DMX's business manager brought him in to set up the Mary Ella Foundation — named for DMX's late grandmother — funding scholarships, tuition, and school supplies for kids who needed them. He did the same structural work for Eve, establishing a foundation for abused-women awareness. The unglamorous work that actually matters, done right.
The structural guy, not the hanger-on.
After "Love Is Blind" (1999) made Eve a voice for women in abusive relationships, she put structure behind the message — and Justin did the foundation work: the same charitable groundwork he built for DMX's Mary Ella Foundation, applied to abused-women awareness. No spotlight, no entourage — the paperwork that turns a hit record into help that lasts.
Same blueprint as DMX — built to do good.
Marvet Britto called Justin when Foxy was hospitalized — she needed a protector, "like Olivia Pope," someone with the wisdom and discretion to hold a crisis together. Foxy became his first entertainment client. The $5,000 check that came with it started everything.
Olivia Pope before Olivia Pope.
Pepa came to Justin through Marvet Britto's trust — and through the hardest kind of case there is. Barred in New Jersey, he filed the paperwork and represented her in court through her divorce from Treach of Naughty by Nature. He and Treach had been friendly before; afterward, in Justin's words, they were "less so friendly." He did the job fully anyway.
Integrity with a price tag — paid in full.
Justin knew Marvet Britto from the creation of The Britto Agency in 1993 — he was there at day one, not hired later. As her legal arm and legal ear, he sat in rooms with Jacob the Jeweler and Puffy, negotiating brand deals for the biggest hip-hop artists of the era. She watched his hustle for years, then trusted him with her biggest clients — Foxy Brown and Pepa among them.
A twenty-year audition, passed.
Through Paul Marshall, Japan's national broadcaster NHK became a client — and for two years Justin secured American talent for its broadcasts, recorded in an early super-high-definition format. He booked drummer Cindy Blackman, then playing with Lenny Kravitz, opening a door to that whole world. Decades later, Blackman and her husband Carlos Santana are still his friends.
The international operator.
Justin booked drummer Cindy Blackman for NHK Japan while she was holding down the kit for Lenny Kravitz — one of the most in-demand drummers alive, secured through the Paul Marshall connection. Decades on she hasn't slowed down: she now plays with Santana, the band led by her husband Carlos Santana, and she and Justin are still friends.
Booked her then. Still family now.
Through Ernest Booker's concert-promotion world, Justin became the attorney for Gerald Levert — son of Eddie Levert of The O'Jays — in a sensitive family matter. It was quiet work, handled with complete discretion. Some trusts are proven by never being talked about.
Trusted with what matters most.
When the King of Swaziland set out to fight AIDS with music, Justin put the benefit album together himself — calling the artists personally and handling every contract, start to finish. The work brought him face to face with the King and several of his wives. A young attorney from New York, trusted with a kingdom's cause.
A kingdom called. He answered.
Phynjuar — the friend who opened the door to the whole Stevie Wonder chapter — cast Justin in the lead role of Steps, an indie film about dating in New York City, executive produced by Shaquille O'Neal. Justin calls it "one of my greatest life accomplishments — up there with meeting Prince." His summary of the whole chapter: "The most meaningful things weren't the most lucrative."
Lead role. Shaq executive produced.
Justin acted in and co-produced the web series Where's The Love with Tia Hodge-Jones — stepping in front of the camera and behind it at once, years before web series were a format anyone took seriously. The entertainment lawyer became the talent. Early, again.
Actor and co-producer.
Justin represented a young Detroit filmmaker named dream hampton in landing the deal for her first film, I Am Ali — her directorial debut, which premiered at Sundance in 2002. She went on to co-write Jay-Z's Decoded and executive-produce Surviving R. Kelly, the Peabody-winning series that helped change the culture. He saw her early.
Tina Farris and Justin came up together — both in their late twenties, both betting on themselves. He was her legal friend, the one she leaned on for business affairs; she returned it in kind, bringing him dream hampton, bringing him The Roots for the video game work, and connecting him across the neo-soul world she moved through. She helped a young lawyer get clients and get his name out there. Thirty years later, she's a USC-trained producer building her own film slate — and the friendship is still working.
Before the legends and the games, there was the groundwork — courtrooms, church, and classroom.
Back home in Newport News, Justin leads the media team at New Beech Grove Baptist Church — a ministry whose mission is building Kingdom-minded people to serve the community. The same eye that built games for Cartoon Network now runs the screens and the story every Sunday. The thread runs all the way back to Stevie Wonder, who told a young attorney to stay in the Word of God.
Kingdom-minded media, every Sunday.
Today Justin serves as an adjunct professor at Christopher Newport University, teaching Business Law for the Arts. His mission in the classroom: equip the next generation of artists and entrepreneurs to navigate business and new technology as artificial intelligence transforms the world around them. The entertainment lawyer became the teacher he once needed.
Teaching artists to own their business.
The American Federation of Government Employees represents 700,000 federal and D.C. government workers, with a presence in virtually every federal agency. When AFGE fought for safety, security, and fairness in the workplace, the Kennedys produced the commercial videos that carried that fight. Media muscle, put to work for working people.
700,000 workers. His cameras.
Before the legends, there was the grind. As a young attorney at FRK, Justin spent years representing clients in Housing Authority meetings, litigating landlord-tenant disputes, managing tax matters, and representing creditors in property purchases and sales. It wasn't glamorous — it was reps, and it's where he learned the law from the ground up.
Where the law got learned.
For a few years at Legal Services in Newark, Justin's clients were the people the system forgets — the elderly and the unrepresented, folks who couldn't afford a lawyer. He drafted their wills and powers of attorney, filed their bankruptcy petitions, and stood beside them in housing matters, contract disputes, debt settlements, and tax fights. He calls that work highly fulfilling — and that compass still points everything he does.
Justice for the people who couldn't pay for it.
The same instinct, the new medium. The artist finally gets his turn.
Broadcast-quality AI video, character-driven comedy, motion graphics, and music — produced at the pace of culture. Justin has cloned his own voice and face to star in original work, and the studio runs a daily content engine across Instagram and Facebook as living proof. What clients get is what he posts himself, every day.
The studio eats its own cooking.
Business processes rebuilt around AI leverage — the same structural instinct that built foundations and negotiated brand deals, applied to operations. Inboxes, follow-ups, and busywork get handled by systems, so people can do the work only people can do.
The structural guy, new century.
Teaching vision, not just tools — from church media teams to corporate workshops. The framework is simple: communication leads to comprehension, comprehension to productivity, productivity to prosperity. Tools change every month; vision compounds.
Teach a person to build, and they build forever.
The Kennedy Firm doesn't sell tier packages. Justin works with serious partners on significant projects — established relationships, major opportunities, visions worth manifesting. When the fit is right, the studio becomes your production arm: AI media, workflow automation, and a team that executes, directed by thirty years of knowing what's next.
One great partnership at a time — a visionary, a catalog, a movement. No menu, no tiers: the engagement is built around what you're building. If you have something big in mind, bring it to the table.
Keynotes, workshops, and AI integration training for your team or organization — vision first, tools second. No production required.
Justin is looking for one great partnership — a visionary, a catalog, a movement — to serve as their production studio. He brings thirty years of trust, a team that can execute, and the instinct that has never been wrong about what's next. If that's you, the door is open.
Start the ConversationThe proof isn't a portfolio file — it's posted in public, every day. Justin's AI comedy, motion graphics, and studio work run on Instagram, where the audience is largest and the work travels furthest. Start there.
No elaborate forms, no waiting rooms. Write Justin directly — every message lands in his inbox.
justin@thekennedyfirm.comPrefer to lay it out first? Use the quick note below — or for studio production, reach Carmen at carmen@thekennedyfirm.com.