Oregon standoff defendant Ryan Bundy is getting more help with his defense.

On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Anna J. Brown allowed Montana resident Roger L. Roots, a convicted felon, to serve as a volunteer paralegal for Bundy and his standby counsel.

Roots, a Libertarian candidate for Montana's secretary of state who is allowed to practice law in Rhode Island, has a controversial past.

Two years ago, he told Montana's Sidney Herald that he was turning away from a youth filled with racism and anti-Semitism to be a champion for individual liberties.

He came close to being denied entry to the bar in Rhode Island because of prior convictions.

Around age 19, he was sentenced to 51 weeks in prison for resisting arrest and violating his probation in Florida. In 1992, he was sentenced to 20 months in federal prison for possession of an unregistered firearm. Authorities located two rifles and a pistol in his dorm room at Northwest Community College in Wyoming, according to legal documents.

Initially, Ryan Bundy had asked for Roots to serve as a second standby counsel.

Bundy told the judge he wanted to be able to speak confidentially with Roots from jail and to have Roots seated beside him at the defense table in court to advise him. Bundy is one of 26 defendants indicted on a federal conspiracy charge stemming from the armed takeover of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. He's set to go to trial Sept. 7.

The judge reminded Bundy that he was considered an indigent defendant, and as such, doesn't have "a right to counsel of your choice.''

Roots, who attended Tuesday's pretrial conference hearing in U.S. District Court in Portland, said he would withdraw his application to be allowed as an out-of-state lawyer to represent Bundy. His $300 application fee will be returned to him, the court confirmed.

Instead, the judge said she'd allow Roots to confer confidentially with Bundy in jail, and sit beside him at the defense table during court hearings, but not allow him to address the court.

"I do accept Roger Roots as a member of our team,'' Ryan Bundy told the court.

Roots' website proclaims, "My client is liberty!'' It also says, "Few lawyers are prepared to challenge the modern governmental leviathan. I view the struggle against government as a lawyer's highest duty.''

Bundy wore the usual blue jail scrubs in court on Tuesday, signifying he's no longer in disciplinary segregation at the Multnomah County Detention Center, his standby lawyer Lisa Ludwig confirmed.

On Monday, Bundy was the sole defendant who appeared in court in the federal conspiracy case wearing a white one-piece jail jumpsuit, which marked that he was facing disciplinary segregation in jail following a scuffle with jail deputies earlier this month.

-- Maxine Bernstein

mbernstein@oregonian.com

503-221-8212

@maxoregonian