When asked to sum up his distinguished career as an attorney in both civil rights and employee benefits law, Bob Gallagher nods toward a globe sitting on a shelf in his office. “I have sailed across the Atlantic and Pacific oceans in small boats and competed in offshore sailboat races around the world,” he says, “and the globe stands for those achievements. But what it ultimately symbolizes to me is the importance of leading a full life both personally and professionally, and the key to that is seeking new challenges and meeting them head-on.”

Bob has been meeting professional challenges at the intersection of law and public policy since he earned his law degree from George Washington University in 1971. After serving as a trial attorney in the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice from 1971 to 1975, he became the directing attorney of a neighborhood legal services office. He then shifted his professional focus, taking on the challenges of another area of law with important public policy implications—employee benefits. In his six years in the Plan Benefits Security Division of the Office of the Solicitor at the Department of Labor, Bob became one of the nation’s foremost experts in benefits litigation, trying the first case brought by the DOL under ERISA and handling numerous other cases involving the protection of the rights of employee benefit plan participants and beneficiaries. When he decided to try his hand at private practice, the decision was easy. “Choosing Groom was a no-brainer,’’ he recalls. “It was, and still is, the preeminent benefits firm in the country.” 

Since joining the firm in 1982, Bob has concentrated on litigation and regulatory issues involving fiduciary responsibility and prohibited transactions. In addition to defending institutional and individual clients in major class and enforcement actions brought by the DOL, he has represented clients in dozens of investigations undertaken by the agency’s National Office as well as all of its regional offices. He has also testified extensively as an expert witness in ERISA cases and speaks frequently on ERISA enforcement and litigation topics. The challenges continue—and he’d have it no other way. “No one has a monopoly on good ideas,” Bob observes, “but hard work does pay off. Doing complex, critical, analytical thinking every day makes you better able to do more of it, and the more of it you do, the more you can accomplish for your clients.”