Alumni Profile: Tom Fast (Class of 1993)

Delegate Tom Fast (Law ’93) has been representing the 32nd District of West Virginia in the West Virginia House of Delegates since 2015. Against towering odds, Fast was elected in 2014 as the first Republican representative in Fayette County in 86 years and was reelected to a second term in 2016.

Since 2015, Tom has served on multiple committees in the State House, starting in the Judicial Committee and being promoted to Chairman of the Industry and Labor Committee and Co-Chairman of the Jails and Prisons Committee. He has been proud to be a co-sponsor on a number of successful bills, including a few pro-life bills that passed despite significant opposition.

His current success in office has been the result of many years of perseverance. He ran for State Senate in 1998 and State House in 2000 and 2002 without success. But, this time, he could feel things would be different. Despite the adversity that he knew running again could bring, Tom remembers it hitting him when he woke up on the day he filed for the 2014 race, “The time is now, the time is right.” “I drove to our capital, I filed my papers, we gave it a good shot, and we won. We finally broke through.”

Tom can trace his interest in running for public office all the way back to his childhood, growing up on a small farm in rural North-Central West Virginia. He reflected, “My family has always had a sense of urgency about governmental affairs in our country. It was a topic of discussion quite often. Even as a teenager, I felt a calling to engage in politics.” However, a specific moment of calling came during a prayer meeting in the early 90’s when Fast was a young law student at Regent University School of Law.

Remembering the moment of inspiration, he said, “I stood up and encouraged my classmates to realize that God works through people, and we are people through whom he can work. And I remember telling them, ‘When I get out of here, I am running for office.”  More than fifteen years have passed since that meeting, and Tom is finally seeing his dream come to fruition.

Delegate Fast said he still values those early days at Regent University, remembering the serious calling that he shared with his classmates to be agents for change in the world and the solid foundation that he received in the study of law. He said, “One of the things that I still cherish to this day is that we learned to understand the relevance of the Bible to the individual, to the church, to the family, and to government. These are things that I deal with on an everyday basis—from property damage, to personal injury, to real estate boundaries, to the true boundaries of government. Scripture has relevance in all of these things.”

After completing his education at Regent, Tom returned to West Virginia where he joined a private law practice in Fayette. After a few years there, he started his own firm, Fast Law Office L.C. in 1996 where he has continued to work for over 20 years. Being in a rural area with few attorneys, Tom works as a general practitioner. He said, “Some law firms in the area specialize, but I can look around my desk right now and see a number of different types of cases.” Though this can be stretching at times, he said it has been a great help in his work as a state representative to be familiar with many different areas of the law.

When asked for some final reflections for Regent University students and alumni, Tom said, “Study the Word. It is life, and its truth, and it guides in all aspects of life. And, understand that God works through people. Regent is a training ground for that purpose, and God needs people to work through—who else but us.”