Federal banking regulators on Tuesday accused eight former insiders of a failed Alpharetta bank — including the new chairman of the state Senate Banking Committee — of gross negligence and various breaches of their financial responsibilities, AJC staffers Scott Trubey and Christopher Quinn report.

In a lawsuit filed by the FDIC, state Sen. Jack S. Murphy, R-Cumming, is among former Integrity Bank executives or directors accused in relation to a series of loans made from 2005 to 2007, the reporters write. The FDIC seeks damages of “over $70 million.

The civil suit is the third filed nationally, and the first in Georgia, by the FDIC against officers and directors of failed institutions as the agency begins seeking to recoup losses to its insurance fund caused by the failures.

The 56-page lawsuit, filed in an Atlanta federal court, describes an uninhibited lending warehouse with slipshod controls and a loan committee of directors and executives who badly botched their duties, the reporters write. Integrity failed in August 2008.

Murphy, who was on the bank’s board from 2000 to 2008, was named last week as chairman of the Senate Banking and Financial Institutions Committee.