A supremely confident and legendarily tough Texas prosecutor, Mr. Bradley says he is learning some of the most important — and humbling — lessons of his 24-year career. It is a painful process, he says. It is also highly public.

“I have been through a series of events that deeply challenged me,” Mr. Bradley, the Williamson County district attorney, said during an extended interview. “I recognized that I could be angry, resentful and react to people, or I could look for the overall purpose and lesson and apply it to not only my own professional life but teach it. And I chose the latter path.”

In the last two years, Mr. Bradley and his trademark sharp tongue have been at the center of two of the most controversial murder cases in Texas. In 2009, as chairman of the Texas Forensic Science Commission, he and the New York-based Innocence Project battled over re-examining the case of Cameron Todd Willingham, the Corsicana man executed in 2004 for setting the 1991 fire that killed his three daughters.

For six years, Mr. Bradley also fought the Innocence Project’s efforts to exonerate Michael Morton, who in 1987 was convicted of murdering his wife by Mr. Bradley’s predecessor, Ken Anderson.

Mr. Bradley discovered that not only was he wrong about Mr. Morton’s guilt, but that there are questions about whether his predecessor committed the worst kind of prosecutorial misconduct: hiding evidence that ultimately allowed the real murderer to remain free and kill again.

Some of Mr. Bradley’s critics are skeptical of his self-professed transformation, pointing out that he is facing re-election next year, and they say it cannot atone for the years that his stubbornness allowed Mr. Morton to remain wrongly imprisoned. But some are hopeful that what he says he has learned will lead other prosecutors to acknowledge that science can reveal and help correct flaws in the state’s criminal justice system.

“He is, I think, a reasonably principled guy who is a complete product of a system that is finally giving way to a new day here in Texas and the rest of the country,” said Jeff Blackburn, general counsel for the Innocence Project of Texas.

Mr. Bradley grew up as a prosecutor in his hometown, Houston, working from 1987 to 1989 under an iconic figure, the Harris County district attorney Johnny Holmes. From 1992 until 2000, Mr. Holmes’s office sent 111 defendants to death row, according to a 2010 report by David McCord, a Drake University Law School professor.

“He was a true Texas lawman,” Mr. Bradley said of Mr. Holmes. “It was an honor to learn while working in his office.”

The workload was crushing, though. He worked 70 hours each week in an office where defense lawyers were viewed as hostile enemies.

“I always felt like I was swimming among sharks,” he said. “And you had to defend yourself, and you have to be the same predator back.”

When Mr. Bradley and his wife, Leslie, decided to expand their family, they moved to Williamson County, which was smaller but had a reputation for being just as tough on crime. Mr. Anderson hired Mr. Bradley.

“It was a tremendous culture shock,” he said.

And not only because his office consisted of a card table and a folding chair in the hallway. Almost immediately, Mr. Bradley said, he realized he could not treat defense lawyers like “sharks” in this small community. “Your professional relationship is an important part of being a lawyer, something I did not develop in Houston that I’m still working on,” he said.

Through the years, Mr. Bradley developed a close relationship with his boss, Mr. Anderson. They wrote two law books together. Mr. Bradley also began working with lawmakers at the Capitol, just a 30-minute drive south of Georgetown, and when Gov. Rick Perry appointed Mr. Anderson as a state judge in 2002, he appointed Mr. Bradley to take over as district attorney.

When Mr. Bradley arrived in Williamson County in 1989, Mr. Morton had already served two years of his life sentence.

Like many of those who are convicted, Mr. Morton maintained his innocence, arguing that an intruder must have killed his wife after he left for work in the morning. In 2005, Mr. Morton began asking the state to test DNA evidence on a number of items, including a bloody blue bandanna found near their home the day after the murder.

bgrissom@texastribune.org