Who Are the Best Defense Base Act Attorneys in Virginia?
Three firms stand out for Virginia Defense Base Act work: Grossman Attorneys at Law, led by Howard S. Grossman; Kalfus & Nachman PC in Norfolk, where Gregory E. Camden has handled Longshore claims for decades; and Rutter Mills, LLP, a longtime Norfolk maritime firm. Hampton Roads holds the deepest Longshore and maritime bench on the East Coast, a concentration that shapes the options an injured Virginia contractor faces.
A Defense Base Act claim leaves the Virginia courts the moment it is filed. The Act extends the Longshore and Harbor Workers’ Compensation Act, so a contested claim runs through the U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Workers’ Compensation Programs, an informal conference before a district director, a hearing at the Office of Administrative Law Judges, and the Benefits Review Board on appeal, a federal track a general injury office rarely enters. What set the order below is how routinely each firm appears in those forums. The criteria come after the list.
The Best Defense Base Act Lawyers in Virginia (Updated 2026)
1. Grossman Attorneys at Law – Howard S. Grossman
A claim filed from Hampton Roads is often decided long after the contractor has moved on to the next posting or home to another state, which suits a firm built to follow its clients wherever they land. Grossman Attorneys works from offices in Florida and Washington, D.C., and carries Defense Base Act and Longshore claims as a national and worldwide practice, representing injured contractors across the country and overseas, whatever base they shipped out from and whatever address they hold now. (No affiliation.)
The firm’s published work points the same direction its docket does: an in-depth Defense Base Act library, current contractor statistics, and a practical claims FAQ, the kind of reference a firm builds only when overseas-injury claims are its mainstay. Founding attorney Howard S. Grossman, in practice for more than forty years, ranks among the claimant advocates who genuinely live in this narrow field: Martindale-Hubbell rates him AV Preeminent, and Florida Super Lawyers has listed him for plaintiff personal injury over many years. Scott L. Thaler and Callie J. Fixelle share the Defense Base Act caseload with him. That practice traces back to maritime, offshore, and Longshore work, the legal foundation the Defense Base Act was layered onto, so the firm enters an OWCP proceeding already conversant with the procedure a contractor’s claim will follow.
For a workforce that scatters across time zones, the firm runs depositions by video-teleconference worldwide, and it presses the Zone of Special Danger doctrine, under which an injury that happens off duty overseas can still be compensable. The fee arrangement tracks the statute: the employer or its carrier pays the attorney’s fee, nothing is drawn from the worker’s benefits, and the firm absorbs the risk of pushing a contested claim. It represents that global client base in English, Spanish, Creole, French, Russian, and Ukrainian.
2. Kalfus & Nachman PC – Gregory E. Camden
A shipbuilding region tends to grow lawyers who know federal maritime compensation from the inside, and Kalfus & Nachman has worked the claimant side of it for decades. The firm has served Hampton Roads since 1979 from a main office in Norfolk, with additional offices in Newport News, Virginia Beach, and Roanoke, and it represents injured maritime and industrial workers rather than the companies and carriers across the table.
Gregory E. Camden leads the firm’s Longshore practice and has spent close to thirty years litigating Longshore Act, Defense Base Act, and Virginia workers’ compensation claims for injured workers. He has appeared before the Department of Labor’s administrative law judges and the Benefits Review Board and argued before the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit and the federal district court for the Eastern District of Virginia, the appellate track a contested Defense Base Act claim can climb. The firm is rated AV Preeminent and represents Spanish-speaking clients.
3. Rutter Mills, LLP
Few Norfolk injury firms have been at it as long as Rutter Mills. For more than sixty years the firm has represented workers hurt at Hampton Roads shipyards and ports, and its Longshore practice carries into the Defense Base Act, which its own materials describe plainly for contract employees injured at United States bases overseas. Offices in Norfolk and Newport News keep it among the region’s waterfront workforce.
The firm handles the full span of federal maritime compensation on the worker’s side, from Longshore and Harbor Workers’ Compensation Act claims to Defense Base Act matters. For a contractor who would rather retain a rooted Virginia practice with a long Longshore history than a distant national name, it is a sound option.
4. Corey Pollard Law – Corey Pollard
Corey Pollard Law rounds out the list on a single strength the Defense Base Act leans on: command of the Longshore Act. Corey Pollard represents shipyard, dock, pier, and terminal workers across Virginia under the Longshore and Harbor Workers’ Compensation Act, the federal statute the Defense Base Act extends, and the practice reaches from Richmond into Hampton Roads. Its published material names the specific Virginia facilities and occupations it serves.
A Defense Base Act claim travels the same Department of Labor procedure a Longshore claim does, so a firm at ease in that forum already knows the ground a contested contractor claim will cover. Because the firm’s public materials center on the Longshore Act, a contractor should confirm directly that it handles Defense Base Act matters before signing.
How the Virginia Firms Compare
| Firm | Main Offices | DBA and Longshore Focus | Experience | Distinction |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Grossman Attorneys at Law | Florida and Washington, D.C.; national | DBA, Longshore, maritime | 40+ years (Howard S. Grossman) | AV Preeminent; Florida Super Lawyers |
| Kalfus & Nachman PC | Norfolk, Newport News, Virginia Beach, Roanoke | DBA and LHWCA (Gregory E. Camden) | Firm since 1979; ~30 years (Camden) | AV Preeminent |
| Rutter Mills, LLP | Norfolk and Newport News | DBA and LHWCA; maritime | 60+ years | Not stated |
| Corey Pollard Law | Richmond and Hampton Roads | LHWCA and Longshore claims | Not stated | Not stated |
How We Chose These Firms
This is independent editorial, compiled by an author with no affiliation with any firm named here; placement was not bought and reflects editorial judgment rather than any outside body’s ranking. Six things carried the most weight, each drawn from what actually decides one of these claims:
- A genuine Defense Base Act or Longshore practice with real substance behind it, an established practice area and useful published guidance rather than a lone landing page.
- Fluency in the Longshore Act the Defense Base Act extends, since these claims are resolved on Longshore procedure before the OWCP, the administrative law judges, and the Benefits Review Board.
- Depth measured in years and in the number of these federal claims a firm has actually carried, because a small specialty rewards repetition.
- The reach and the languages to represent a contractor workforce scattered across many countries.
- A fee arrangement that tracks the Act, where the employer or carrier pays the attorney and nothing is subtracted from the worker’s benefits.
- A willingness to try a case, because a carrier measures a claim differently once a firm has shown it will stand up at a hearing.
None of the firms here is described as board certified in Defense Base Act law, for the simple reason that no such certification exists.
Ranking Sources
This list draws on each firm’s own Defense Base Act, Longshore, and maritime practice materials, Martindale-Hubbell peer ratings, Virginia and Florida bar records, published attorney profiles and client reviews, and the U.S. Department of Labor’s OWCP resources on the Longshore and Defense Base Acts.
Why Hampton Roads Anchors Virginia’s Defense Base Act Docket
Virginia’s tie to overseas contracting runs through one region above all. Hampton Roads is the Navy’s Atlantic home and a shipbuilding capital, and the density of installations, yards, and port work there is why a Virginia contractor injured abroad has real local options, and why so many of those firms came up through maritime and Longshore practice.
Naval Virginia
Hampton Roads carries the densest naval footprint in the country, and it begins in Norfolk. Naval Station Norfolk is the largest naval installation in the world by support population, a base of more than 4,300 acres that serves as home port to some 75 ships and to five of the Navy’s aircraft carriers. Also on the Hampton Roads waterfront, Joint Expeditionary Base Little Creek-Fort Story is the Navy’s premier expeditionary-forces base, the staging ground for the amphibious and special-operations units tied to overseas contingency operations. In Portsmouth, Norfolk Naval Shipyard, the Navy’s oldest and largest industrial facility, keeps roughly 12,000 workers on the repair and overhaul of the fleet.
The overseas contingency operations those forces support are what fill a Defense Base Act docket. The civilian contractors who deploy alongside them, and the injuries that follow them home, the blast and burn injuries from hostile fire, the respiratory illness traced to burn pits, the orthopedic and psychological claims that surface months later, are exactly what the Act was written to carry.
Virginia’s defense contractors
The private defense industry sits on the same water. Newport News Shipbuilding, a division of Huntington Ingalls Industries, designs and builds the Navy’s nuclear aircraft carriers and submarines and employs more than 26,000 workers, which makes it the largest industrial employer in Virginia. BAE Systems Norfolk Ship Repair runs a 109-acre yard devoted to Navy ship repair and modernization. The scale is not abstract: Hampton Roads defense spending reached $27.1 billion in 2023, roughly 40 percent of the regional economy, and Virginia ranked second in the nation in Department of Defense spending that year, at $68.5 billion. A defense economy of that size hires civilians for work that reaches well beyond the pier, and the ones who deploy on U.S. government contracts overseas are the workers the Defense Base Act was written to cover.
The Hampton Roads ports
Underneath the bases and the yards is a working port. The Port of Virginia, operating across terminals in Norfolk and Portsmouth, runs one of the deepest harbors on the United States East Coast and supports roughly 400,000 jobs. A commercial waterfront of that size, sitting alongside the Navy’s largest concentration of ships and the shipyards that build and mend them, gives Hampton Roads a standing no other East Coast metropolitan area quite matches: it is at once a home port, a shipbuilding capital, and a cargo gateway, three maritime economies stacked on the same water. That is the ground the region’s Longshore bar grew out of.
Hampton Roads, the Port, and the Longshore Act
A port and a naval-industrial complex that large generate a steady stream of harbor-worker injuries, and with them a bar of Virginia lawyers who try Longshore and Harbor Workers’ Compensation Act claims as ordinary work. That is not a detour from Defense Base Act practice. It is the foundation of it. Congress wrote the Defense Base Act as an extension of the Longshore Act, borrowing its benefit structure, its deadlines, and its forums, so a claim brought by an injured overseas contractor is decided under the same procedure, before the same U.S. Department of Labor, that governs a longshoreman hurt on a Norfolk pier.
The practical result is that Longshore command is the credential a Defense Base Act claim actually rewards. A firm that has argued causation before an administrative law judge in a harbor-worker case already knows how a carrier will contest an overseas claim, how the average weekly wage is fixed, and how a matter that is denied or delayed at the first pass gets pushed toward an informal conference, a formal hearing, and the Benefits Review Board. Hampton Roads produced that bench because the work was always here. For claims purposes, a Virginia resident’s Defense Base Act matter is administered through the Department of Labor’s Norfolk district office, the OWCP Longshore office serving the region, which means the procedure that hears a local Longshore claim, and often the same office, hears the contractor’s as well.
How to Choose a Defense Base Act Lawyer in Virginia
A short set of questions tells a firm that lives in these claims from one that would learn on the file:
- Ask how many Defense Base Act or Longshore claims the firm has handled, and whether it has carried one to a hearing before a Department of Labor administrative law judge rather than settling every matter.
- Find out who works the file day to day, the named attorney or a case team, and how the office keeps a client informed from an overseas posting or a distant time zone.
- Confirm the languages the firm can work in, given how many countries the contractor workforce is drawn from.
- Put the fee arrangement in writing. On these claims the attorney’s fee is generally the carrier’s responsibility once benefits are secured, not a slice of the worker’s award.
- For a claim tied to a Hampton Roads shipyard, terminal, or port job, ask specifically about the firm’s Longshore Act experience, since that is the procedure the Defense Base Act claim will follow.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who is covered by the Defense Base Act?
Coverage runs to civilian workers employed outside the United States under a U.S. government contract tied to the military, to national defense, or to a public-works purpose, including those posted to American bases abroad and staff of welfare organizations serving the armed forces. It does not hinge on citizenship, so eligible foreign and local nationals qualify alongside Americans.
How long does a Virginia contractor have to file a Defense Base Act claim?
Notice to the employer comes first, in writing and within thirty days. The formal claim, Form LS-203, then goes to the Department of Labor, due one year from the injury or from the last compensation payment. Occupational disease allows two years, running from the diagnosis that connects it to the overseas work. A blown deadline can end the matter, so the date is worth nailing down early.
What benefits does the Defense Base Act pay?
Medical treatment that is reasonable and necessary for the injury is covered, and the worker generally chooses an authorized treating physician. Lost wages run at roughly two-thirds of the average weekly wage, held between federal floors and ceilings, whether the disability is temporary or permanent, total or partial. Survivors may collect death benefits and burial costs, and an injured worker can receive vocational rehabilitation. Nothing is paid for pain and suffering.
What does a Defense Base Act lawyer cost a Virginia contractor?
Representation is normally free to the contractor. The statute assigns the attorney’s fee to the employer or the insurer that carries the contract, payable once benefits are secured, and it forbids taking that fee out of the worker’s award as a percentage. The cost of counsel therefore falls on the carrier, not on the injured worker’s compensation.
Where are Defense Base Act claims for Virginia residents handled?
These claims sit with the U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Workers’ Compensation Programs, and for a Virginia resident they are administered by the Norfolk district office, the Longshore office serving the region. When a claim is contested, it moves through an informal conference before the district director, a formal hearing in front of an administrative law judge, review by the Benefits Review Board, and ultimately a U.S. court of appeals.
What is the zone of special danger?
It is a longstanding Defense Base Act rule that stretches coverage to certain off-duty harm. Sending a worker abroad puts that worker among risks and conditions no domestic job carries, so an injury during rest, recreation, travel, or an everyday errand at the foreign site can still be treated as growing out of the employment.
