Grady To Step Down As State Budget Secretary In October

By Bryan P. Sears, Maryland Matters

August 22, 2025

Gov. Wes Moore’s Cabinet will have another vacancy this fall, when state Budget Secretary Helene Grady will leave to start her own consulting business.

Grady is the second senior administration official to announce her departure this week, after Monday’s announcement that Chief of Staff Fagan Harris is leaving, and the seventh so far this year. Her decision to leave, which will be announced by the administration Friday, was not unexpected, as it was widely circulated in and around Annapolis.

But it was still “incredibly difficult,” Grady said in an interview with Maryland Matters.

“It’s just monumental pride that I feel in the work and the team, and this leads me to feel very confident that this is the appropriate time to pass the baton for the next leg of this work,” Grady said.

Grady said she expects to start her own consulting firm “to work with public and private organizations to help them tackle messy challenges through analysis and collaboration, aligning strategic vision with detailed planning and management execution, and communicating the important work they’re doing internally and externally.”

Moore called Grady “a true public servant in every beautiful sense of that phrase.”

“When the story of Maryland’s Decade is written, her fingerprints will be all over the page,” Moore said in a statement. “During Secretary Grady’s distinguished tenure, we turned an inherited structural deficit into a surplus, delivered a tax cut to middle-class families, and secured historic investments in education, health care, public safety, transportation, and countless other priorities that Marylanders deserve.”

Grady has had to help craft budgets in a new era in which the legislature gained broad budgetary power: A constitutional amendment approved by voters before Moore was elected ended an era where Maryland’s governor controlled the budget with arguably more power than any other state executive.

Maryland Budget Secretary Helene Grady. (File photo by Bryan P. Sears/Maryland Matters)

Additionally, all three budget years have come with their own challenges including a post-COVID economy and the ongoing expense of the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future education reforms. This year alone, Moore and the legislature crafted a compromise budget that includes tax increases (and some modest targeted decreases) and fees.

She was also responsible for implementing a transition of 50,000 retired employees to Medicare. The move, mandated before Moore came into office, saved the state $200 million annually and $10 billion in post-employment liabilities. But it left retirees angry and sparked court challenges.

“I wouldn’t say that these particular efforts weighed heavily in any way on my decision,” Grady said. “This is part of the portfolio of work that I’m just incredibly proud of the DBM team in terms of what we’ve accomplished together and with our colleagues across state government in just three short years.”

Harris, Moore’s chief of staff, credited Grady with guiding the administration through a 2025 legislative session that included erasing a $3.3 billion structural budget deficit.

“We knew this was going to be one of our most challenging sessions in the first term,” Harris said. “There are a lot of issues needed to be resolved in the budget and for the state’s kind of fiscal footing going forward.”

Harris said Grady was the “architect of the governor’s tax plan.” Moore boasted that 94% of Marylanders would see no change in their taxes or would get a reduction, albeit a modest one. That plan was ultimately altered by legislators as they crated a compromise budget.

“I think she understood that the General Assembly has an important role in this,” Harris said. “I think what she set out at the outset was so sturdy and the framework for the budget was so clear and compelling, that while the budget and the ultimate plan that was passed evolved somewhat, the tent poles remain the same.”

A transition and an October departure

Grady said the job is “incredibly fulfilling and invigorating, but also very consuming, and I think it’s the right time for someone fresh to come in and lead the next leg of the work.”

She plans to stay until October, expecting the extended notice will allow Moore to find a new secretary and ensure a smooth transition.

“My understanding is that the governor’s office is focused on a search with an eye toward potentially having a successor named in that time frame,” Grady said.

Gov.-elect Wes Moore (D) and Lt. Gov.-elect Aruna Miller (D) flanked by their first round of appointees. Budget Secretary Helene Grady is on the left. (File photo by Josh Kurtz/Maryland Matters.)

October is a key month for the executive branch as it plans its budget for the coming legislative session and fiscal year.

“The team is very strong and really well positioned to keep everything running through this transition,” Grady said. “That’s also part of the reason we’re announcing at this point, so that we can ensure a smooth transition between now and when I separate in October.

“Everything is underway as we would normally be doing at this point in the year, and I anticipate a really smooth handoff with whoever comes in to succeed me,” she said. “October is a pretty natural time for that transition.”

Grady was one of five early hires made by Moore in November 2022 following his historic election. Prior to joining the administration, she was chief financial officer and treasurer at Johns Hopkins University.

She is married to Matthew Gallagher, president and CEO of the Goldseker Foundation in Baltimore and chief of staff to former Gov. Martin O’Malley (D). Gallagher is also chair of the board for Baltimore Corps, a Baltimore nonprofit once headed by Harris, Moore’s outgoing chief of staff.

Talk of Grady’s departure grew in recent weeks, as did talk of potential replacements, including Sen. Guy Guzzone (D-Howard), chair of the Senate Budget and Taxation CommitteeChair Sen. Guy Guzzone (D-Howard), and Richard Madaleno, the former Montgomery County senator and vice chair of Budget and Tax, who currently is county administrative officer under term-limited Montgomery County Executive Marc Elrich.

Challenges on the horizon

The “next leg” of the work, as Grady described it, will be rife with challenges.

“As you know, one key, key part of the next leg of the work for the next DBM leader is certainly going to be helping Maryland navigate the changes and the impacts of changes from the federal government,” Grady said.

Included in those are “the impacts on Maryland’s economy from federal job losses, which obviously impact our revenue base, potentially, as well as the impact from federal budget changes, particularly within Medicaid and SNAP at the top of the list,” she said.

Grady is the seventh senior official to leave the Moore administration as it prepares to enter its last session before Moore will be up for reelection in 2026.

Harris announced Monday that he will leave on Jan. 5 to become the next president and CEO of the Baltimore-based Abell Foundation, a prominent philanthropic organization.

In July, Transportation Secretary Paul Wiedefeld announced his retirement.

Embattled Department of Juvenile Services Secretary Vincent Schiraldi left the administration. Schiraldi, a lightning rod for criticism, especially from Republicans, said he left of his own accord, but Moore later said he asked the secretary to resign.

Anthony C. “Tony” Woods announced in May that he was leaving his job as secretary of Veterans and Military Families for a private-sector tech startup.

In January, Moore announced Kevin Anderson would leave his role as Commerce secretary and become an economic development adviser. Two weeks later, state Health Secretary Laura Herrera Scott announced she would step down amid a budget storm that included a proposed $200 million cut in funding to the Developmental Disabilities Administration.