West Virginia Senator Jim Justice (R) and his wife Cathy Justice immediately settled a new lawsuit seeking more than $5.1 million in unpaid federal income taxes, penalties, and interest for the 2009 tax year.
The civil complaint, filed Monday at the request of the IRS, claimed the service has made repeated attempts to collect the unpaid liabilities, but that the couple has either refused or neglected to pay those assessments.
That filing was followed a short time later by a joint motion for court approval of a consent judgment under which the couple agreed to the entry of a $5.16 million judgment against them as of Aug. 4, 2025, together with statutory interest “and other additions to tax accruing thereafter according to law until paid in full.”
Justice—who inherited his father’s coal mining business and owns the Greenbrier Resort in White Sulphur Springs—served as governor of West Virginia from 2017 to 2025, when he joined the US Senate to replace the now-former Democrat Joe Manchin.
Justice took the Senate seat after defeating Democrat Glenn Elliott, who’d received Manchin’s endorsement.
The complaint, filed in the US District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia, was filed nearly 10 years to the day from the Internal Revenue Service’s initial assessment of unpaid taxes.
The senator’s offices didn’t immediately return calls seeking comment.
The case is United States v. Justice, S.D. W.Va., No. 5:25-cv-00694, 11/24/25.
(Updates throughout with details on consent judgment. A previous version corrected the state Justice served as governor.)
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