The Gallatin Group of Spokane, a subsidiary of Portland-based Gallatin Public Affairs, has shuttered its office here as two former partners with the public relations and marketing firm recently left the company to pursue other career opportunities.

Eric Williams, Gallatin Group’s former managing partner, left Spokane and began working for the Washington, D.C.-based Nuclear Energy Institute on Aug. 21, Williams said in a farewell email to the firm’s business associates that also was sent to the Journal.

The Nuclear Energy Institute, a nuclear energy lobbying group, develops policy on key legislative and regulatory issues affecting the industry, according to the NEI website.

Jeffrey Bell, also a former partner in Gallatin who worked out of Spokane, has yet to publicly disclose his future plans.

“He’ll soon have an announcement about an exciting new professional opportunity in the Spokane community,” says Portland-based Gallatin President Dan Lavey.

Bell couldn’t be reached for comment.

An administrative assistant, the only other employee at the office here, has secured another job in Spokane, Lavey says.

He says most of Gallatin’s Spokane-area clients will continue working with the firm, being served by Gallatin personnel in Seattle and Portland.

“Our Spokane office, while never the largest in the Gallatin family of offices, holds a special place in the history of our firm,” Lavey says.

Chris Carlson was founding partner for Gallatin here, opening the Spokane office in 1990 after a career in journalism and corporate public affairs with Kaiser Aluminum Corp., Lavey says.

Carlson, who also had a personal and professional association with former Idaho Gov. Cecil Andrus, who recently passed away, retired from Gallatin in 2009, he says.

“While our Spokane office is closing, our knowledge of the region remains,” Lavey says.

Gallatin Group’s Spokane office operated most recently at 103 E. Indiana, on the North Side. Gallatin still has offices in Seattle, Olympia, Portland, Salem, and Boise.

For the past five years, Gallatin operated in 2,600 square feet of office space in a building at the northwest corner of the intersection of Ruby and Indiana.

Spokane attorney Geoff Swindler is one of the co-owners of the building, which has a total of 5,200 square feet. Bell still maintains an ownership interest in the building.

Swindler says he, along with three other private attorneys, occupy the other half of the building.

He says Path of Life Ministries of Spokane, a nonprofit formed in 1987 that hosts post-abortion support groups, has signed a lease to occupy the office space once occupied by Gallatin Group, starting at the beginning of September.