From the stone buildings of Loyola Blakefield, through small liberal arts colleges and law school to public sector jobs, Baltimore natives Thomas M. DiBiagio and James Wyda have walked similar career paths.
Now, Maryland's U.S. attorney and its federal public defender face each other in what could be one of the highest-profile trials in recent state history - the murder case of sniper suspect John Allen Muhammad. (Lee Boyd Malvo, the other sniper defendant, is represented by Baltimore attorney Joshua R. Treem).
Although on opposite sides of the courtroom, DiBiagio and Wyda have similar styles, according to many in the legal community: They are studious, thorough, and capable of dealing with this case's intense media scrutiny.
"I think Tom is perhaps a little more outgoing," said Richard D. Bennett, who hired DiBiagio as an assistant U.S. attorney in 1991 and now, as a private defense attorney, works regularly with Wyda. "Jim is probably a little more internally focused. Both are extremely hard-working, both extremely focused. Maybe it comes from that good Jesuit training."
To longtime faculty at the Towson high school where the two men got that training, DiBiagio, 42, and Wyda, 43, are the floppy-haired students of the mid-1970s, regardless of the recent news conferences and sound bites.
"I saw [Wyda] on TV," said Dean John Stewart, the 60-year-old former football coach and human archive of Loyola Blakefield history. "I was going to call him up and tell him to shave."
Wyda followed his brother, Joe, from Our Lady of Fatima School in East Baltimore to Loyola in 1973. The brothers grew up in a working-class family and lived on Conley Street near Eastern Avenue.
Tim W. Thompson, who lived near the family and went to school with Joe Wyda, remembered the three-bus, sometimes-hitchhiking, two-hour trek from his side of the city to school.
"We did a lot of studying on that bus," he said.
DiBiagio also had family at Loyola. His four brothers - he was the second to youngest - also went to the school. One of them, Steve DiBiagio, coached lacrosse there after he graduated.
"They're a great family," Stewart said, recalling the DiBiagio parents showing up at all their sons sports games.
DiBiagio's mother still lives in the Phoenix house where her sons grew up, some miles north of the school in Baltimore County.
A photo in the 1977 yearbook shows James Wyda with collar-length wavy hair, sitting in a window with a book, wearing a striped knit shirt typical of the era.
Beside his senior photo in the 1978 yearbook, DiBiagio - who wore a blazer and tie for that occasion - described himself as a "Ramblin' kind of guy." After Loyola, both men attended small liberal arts colleges. Wyda enrolled at Trinity College in Connecticut, where he joined the new American studies program. DiBiagio majored in international studies at Dickinson College in Pennsylvania.
In college and law school - DiBiagio attended the University of Richmond Law School; Wyda went to Yale - both took a studious, critical view of the law, people who knew them recall. They apparently carried with them the Jesuit values of social awareness and intellectualism.
When DiBiagio returned to his alma matter this fall to speak at the school's opening convocation for freshmen, he emphasized these goals, and encouraged students to work toward them.
"When we speak of standards, we mean moral clarity," he told them. "This moral clarity must be grounded on a fidelity to a common set of core values - honesty, discipline and personal responsibility."
Both men returned to the Baltimore area to practice law. Wyda has spent his career as a public defender, in the state and federal public defenders' offices and in the federal public defender's office. DiBiagio started at a Baltimore firm, Semmes, Bowen & Semmes, then served as an assistant U.S. attorney, and then worked for a Washington firm before taking the top prosecutor job.
Colleagues say DiBiagio and Wyda, both of whom declined to comment for this article, have worked together but are not close friends.
"I would say for the most part their styles are similar," said attorney Herb Better, who worked in the U.S. attorney's office for 14 years. "They both tend to do extremely well, but in a relatively quiet and controlled way."
They also earned reputations as passionate litigants.
"He really cared about his clients," attorney William Kanwisher said of Wyda, a co-worker at the state public defender's office.
Both only a few years out of law school, Kanwisher and Wyda defended Eric Joseph Tirado, who was charged with the shooting death of a state trooper. Tirado was convicted but not sentenced to death. That case, Kanwisher said, cemented his and Wyda's friendship.
DiBiagio also cares deeply, according to those who worked with him. As a prosecutor, he spoke forcefully to jurors about the corrosive effect of drugs in Baltimore: "This stuff is bad," he said, prosecuting a drug case in the early 1990s. "It's hurting the communities. How do you get that across? How do you get beyond the nice wood paneling? The flag?"
Both men in their current positions have earned solid reputations, as have their offices, lawyers said. DiBiagio has stressed professionalism, they said. Wyda has recruited top lawyers to act as court-appointed counsel when his own office cannot take a case, giving federal defendants what some lawyers say is the best representation money could buy, for free.
"We have the national focus on our courthouse in a case of great national and international significance," Bennett said. "And I have no doubt that DiBiagio and Wyda will equip themselves very well, and that the people of the country will be well served."