David J Marshall

About David J Marshall

Top Whistleblower Lawyer in Washington, D.C

David J. Marshall has successfully represented hundreds of whistleblowers and other employees in the financial, pharmaceutical, nuclear, aviation, railroad, healthcare, medical device, retail, and other industries, and has been recognized as a top whistleblower lawyer by Super Lawyers, Washingtonian Magazine, and The Best Lawyers in America. Martindale-Hubbell rates him as "AV Preeminent," the highest possible peer-review rating.

Mr. Marshall, a founding partner of Katz, Marshall & Banks, LLP, focuses his practice on a wide range of corporate whistleblower issues. He represents individuals in whistleblower-reward programs run by the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Internal Revenue Service, and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, as well as plaintiffs or "relators" in False Claims Act qui tam lawsuits. Mr. Marshall publishes the annual SEC Whistleblower Practice Guide, a comprehensive handbook for whistleblowers and their lawyers, in connection with his representation of numerous whistleblowers before the SEC.

Mr. Marshall's practice also includes whistleblower retaliation cases. He represents employees who have faced retaliation from their employers for reporting corporate wrongdoing in claims brought under the whistleblower provisions of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, the Dodd-Frank Act, and numerous other federal and state laws.

Mr. Marshall represented thirteen flight attendants in a whistleblower-retaliation complaint against United Airlines, which resulted in a March 2016 settlement that allowed them to return to work. In 2014, he successfully represented the whistleblower in a qui tam and retaliation lawsuit against a nursing-home company for fraudulently billing Medicare for unnecessary therapies, and in 2013, he successfully represented the whistleblower in a qui tam lawsuit against the Gallup Organization, which resulted in the recovery of $10.5 million in taxpayer funds. He has also won significant victories in whistleblower cases against the Architect of the Capitol (asbestos), Deutsche Bank (financial reporting), the Brown's Ferry Nuclear Plant (nuclear safety), Lockheed Martin (defense procurement), and the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum (asbestos).

Most recently, in April 2021, the Securities and Exchange Commission awarded Mr. Marshall's client $3.2 million for providing critical information that directly led to successful enforcement action against a large financial institution.

Mr. Marshall has extensive experience negotiating complex executive employment and separation contracts, in addition to his work as a whistleblower lawyer. He has successfully represented plaintiffs in sexual harassment, pregnancy discrimination, and other workplace discrimination and retaliation cases.

Mr. Marshall worked as a staff attorney for the Political Rights Defense Fund from 1981 to 1984, where he represented trade unionists and political activists across the country in civil liberties, free speech, defamation, and political asylum cases. For the next 12 years, he worked as a steelworker, garment worker, freight railroad conductor, and refinery worker, and he was a rank-and-file union activist in some of the nation's largest industries and unions. In 1997, he returned to full-time legal practice in Washington, D.C.

Mr. Marshall has appeared in a variety of national and local media outlets. He frequently speaks as an expert on whistleblower law at legal conferences has written extensively on whistleblower issues, and has provided comments and training to government agencies on developments in the nation's whistleblower laws.

Mr. Marshall received his Bachelor of Arts degree, summa cum laude, from Emory University, then went on to the University of St. Andrews in Scotland as the first Bobby Jones Scholar, and finally to Harvard Law School, where he graduated cum laude.