The VLW Blog

Murray J. Janus, a Richmond criminal defense lawyer for 50 years, died Saturday at age 74. Mr. Janus was the former president of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and the John Marshall Inn of Court. His death was announced by the NACDL in a new release. Mr. Janus was a life member of [...]

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Arlington family lawyer Betty A. Thompson died Monday at the age of 88. McLean lawyer Joseph A. Condo, another leading divorce lawyer, confirmed Thompson’s death Tuesday. His announcement of the death on his Facebook page brought accolades from other Northern Virginia lawyers. Ms. Thompson was recognized by the General Assembly in 2010 for more than [...]

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Leading Virginia trial lawyer William B. Poff of Roanoke died Wednesday morning after a long illness. Mr. Poff had been a “role model for lawyers all over this state for more than five decades,” said Senior U.S. District Judge Robert E. Payne of Richmond, speaking at a ceremony in April. Payne helped to honor Mr. [...]

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Longtime McGuireWoods leader Robert H. Patterson Jr. has died, sixty years after he become the ninth lawyer at a Richmond firm then called McGuire, Eggleston, Bocock & Wood. From humble beginnings – growing up on Church Hill as a son of a railroad engineer – Mr. Patterson came to dominate the leadership of one of [...]

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Former Virginia State Bar President Roderick Bell Mathews died of cancer on Friday night at his home in Richmond. He was 71. The retired Troutman Sanders partner helped launch the World Justice Project in 2006 and was serving as its treasurer at the time of his death, according to the Richmond Times-Dispatch. Mr. Mathews was [...]

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Ken Geroe, a former Portsmouth prosecutor and a partner in the Virginia Beach firm of Brydges, Geroe, Rosenblatt & O’Brien PLLC, has died while undergoing liver transplant surgery at the VCU Medical Center in Richmond. He was 56. Mr. Geroe grew up in the Bayview section of Norfolk, graduated from Norfolk Catholic High School and [...]

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A memorial service for Richard H. Poff, a retired justice of the Supreme Court of Virginia, will be held tomorrow at 4 p.m. at Woody Funeral Home Huguenot Chapel, 1020 Huguenot Road, Midlothian. Burial will take place Thursday at Sunset Cemetery in Christiansburg. Justice Poff died June 28 in Tullahoma, Tenn. He was a longtime [...]

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W. Carrington Thompson, a former delegate, senator, circuit judge and justice of the Supreme court of Virginia, died Saturday at his home in Chatham. He was 95. Justice Thompson was appointed to the court in 1980 at age 64. He resigned three years later citing personal reasons. He told the Richmond Times-Dispatch when he resigned [...]

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Bruce F. Jamerson, clerk of the House of Delegates for the past 20 years, has died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. His body was found about 2:30 a.m. today along a path near the river at Watkins Landing in Powhatan County. A Virginia State Police bloodhound was used to search for him after his car [...]

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Senior U.S. District Judge Richard L. Williams, a founder of what is now McGuireWoods LLP and a federal judge for more than 30 years, died at his home on Feb. 19. He was 87. A native of Morrisville, Judge Williams joined the U.S. Army Signal Corps after graduating from high school and survived the Japanese [...]

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