In opening the Law Office of Gerald L. Gilliard, Esq. (www.GilliardAssociates.com) in Washington, D.C., Attorney Gerald Gilliard and Associate Attorney Amber Smith are meeting the growing demand for exceptional yet affordable employment law legal services in the areas of whistleblower actions, wrongful termination, employment discrimination, security clearance revocations, non-competitive promotions, disability retirement, workers’ compensation, and the Family Medical Leave Act.
According to Mr. Gilliard, “A result of the Federal government’s belt-tightening is that agency managers now seek to reduce the rolls of vulnerable and older workers, and to reduce the needs for government contractors. This is taking place in an environment in which thousands of unemployed Americans are ready to take the job of someone terminated from private sector employment. We are ready and equipped to defend government employees and government contractor employees who are unfairly let go, older employees who have asked to retire really because they might be thought to make “too much,”and employees left with no choice but to blow the whistle on management or otherwise take the blame for management fraud, waste and abuse of authority.”
Mr. Gilliard’s representation of clients in a broad range of labor and employment matters includes an association with a government contracts litigation boutique where he counseled corporate whistleblowers during Federal trial and appellate qui tam and commercial litigation against powerful corporations such as KBR, Halliburton Co., and Telefónica, S.A. He went on to serve as Staff Counsel for the American Federation of Government Employees, AFL-CIO (AFGE), a federal-sector labor union with more than 600,000 members. His dedicated, relentless legal representation and nationwide outreach efforts to thousands of Transportation Security Administration airport screeners (Transportation Security Officers, or TSOs) was crucial to AFGE’s successful election as collective bargaining representative for TSOs in 2010. Since then he has gone on in private practice to represent Federal and private sector employees alike before the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, and the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
Gerald Gilliard is a former board member of the D.C. Bar Labor and Employment Law Steering Committee and a current member of the Metropolitan Washington Employment Lawyers Association, an affiliate of the National Employment Law Association. Mr. Gilliard, the son of an Army Reserve sergeant, attended the University of Pennsylvania on an AFSCME scholarship and is a graduate of Georgetown University Law Center.
Amber Smith, an associate with The Law Office of Gerald Gilliard, is a graduate of the University of Georgia and the George Washington University Law School and a member of the New York State Bar Association. She has specific experience in the areas of federal sector employment law, wrongful termination suits, unfair bargaining issues, and unfair labor practices.
The Law Office of Gerald Gilliard is a full-service employment law firm based in Washington, D.C., with attorneys who possess extensive experience in a broad range of employment law practice areas. A philosophy of concerted, collaborative problem solving, coupled with a client-centered focus, allows The Law Office of Gerald Gilliard to deliver exceptional legal services at competitive rates.