Who is Gizelle Bryant’s ex husband Jamal Bryant?

In January of 2016 Bravo released their latest Real Housewives franchise centering around the affluent D.C. Montgomery County suburb, Potomac. The show stars some very interesting women with some very interesting back-stories, husbands and ex husbands.

Fourty-five-year-old Gizelle Bryant is one of the 5 stars. Her ex husband is 44-year-old Baltimore pastor Jamal Bryant and Jamal is definitely quite a situation. The two married in 2002 and have three children together: Grace and twins Angel and Adore.

On Monday night Gizelle and co-star Charrisse Jackson-Jordan and Karen Huger got in to a tiff over etiquette and Jackson makes a dig at Bryant’s ex and if you know Jamal’s story you know why he would become a target this season.

So who is Gizelle Bryant’s ex husband Jamal Bryant?

He is a well-known pastor at the Empowerment Temple AME Church in Baltimore and a recent candidate for Congress.

Bryant was born in Baltimore, Maryland, on May 21st, 1971 to Bishop John Richard Bryant and Rev. Cecilia Williams-Bryant in Cambridge, MA.

He grew up in the Church and when his father was elected bishop in the African Methodist Episcopal Church in the summer of 1988, his family stayed in Africa for their first assignment.

Bryant has has a bachelor’s degree in political science and international studies from Morehouse College in Atlanta, a master of divinity degree from Duke University and a doctorate in ministry from the Graduate Theological Foundation. But Bryant is not really famous for his “pious-ness”.

Jamal already had two out-of-wedlock children including a daughter, Topaz, from an Atlanta woman named Crystal Madison, before he married Gizelle.

Rumors began flying that Rev. Bryant was cheating on his wife among the church’s 10,000-congregants.

He and Gizelle divorced in 2009 after Jamal had had an extra-marital affair and allegedly impregnated a 17-year-old church member. The Church leaders asked him to step down while they initiated a paternity test to see if he was really the father.

It was only after Michelle Wedderburn filed for a child support increase, that he finally acknowledged that he had fathered a daughter named Naomi with her in 2001.

Interestingly Gizelle cancelled the divorce filing to Jamal on January 24th in 2008 causing a lot of confusion with the church. But in 2012, Jamal Bryant confirmed that they were in fact divorced, but living together, so they could co-parent their children.

During the divorce husband Gizelle claimed that she was unemployed while her husband earned more than $350,000 a year.

Adding to the intrigue on Sept. 14th, 2015 he announced that he would seek the Democratic nomination for the 7th Congressional District to replace Rep. Elijah E. Cummings. But he quickly dropped out of the race.

Baltimore is absolutely notorious for political corruption BTW and I hardly doubt that Jamal was going to change that if you know what I mean. I found the back-story fascinating and a bit appalling, yet not shocking considering we are dealing with the situations swirling around D.C..

In fact what may make this franchise so interesting is the shameless-ness of the corruption we are dealing with (we haven’t even begun looking into Raymond ‘I’m the Black Bill Gates’ Huger who no doubt is getting some serious assistance from friends in high places). So I suspect we may hear a few more digs at Gizelle’s ex during the course of the fledgling season.