Born in Ottawa, Illinois, and raised in Ottawa and North Plainfield, NJ, Mr. Bruton graduated from the University of North Carolina in 1971.  He received his J.D. from the Temple University School of Law, where he was associate editor, Temple Law Quarterly, and his LL.M. in taxation from Georgetown University Law Center.  After Temple, Mr. Bruton joined the criminal tax division of the Internal Revenue Service’s Office of Chief Counsel before moving to the Department of Justice, where he spent four years as a trial attorney in the appellate section of the tax division.  He joined Williams & Connolly in 1981.

Mr. Bruton left the firm in September, 1989, after being appointed principal deputy assistant attorney general in the tax division at the Department of Justice.  He was named acting assistant attorney general of tax in 1992, returning to Williams & Connolly in May, 1993.

A fellow in the American College of Tax Counsel since 1994, Mr. Bruton has been active in the Tax Section of the American Bar Association, Civil and Criminal Tax Penalties and Special Projects Committees.  He is past Chair of the Tax Litigation Committee of the American Bar Association Litigation Section and is past Co-Chair of the Committee on Tax Audits and Litigation of the District of Columbia Bar.  Mr. Bruton has been identified as one of "Washington's Top Lawyers" by Washingtonian magazine every year since 2004 and by Best Lawyers, in the taxation category, every year since 2006.  Mr. Bruton received top rankings in tax fraud litigation in the 2013-2023 editions of Chambers USA: America’s Leading Lawyers for Business.