Jim Murphy is the Office Managing Shareholder for the firm’s Washington office and a member of the firm’s Management Committee and the Client Services Steering Committee. Prior to joining Ogletree Deakins, Jim held positions as chief labor and employment counsel and as senior counsel for labor and employment for two of the world’s largest defense contractors. As a former corporate counsel, Jim worked side-by-side with business leaders and understands the importance of providing practical advice and workable solutions that achieve client objectives.
Jim represents and defends clients in the aerospace and defense, information technology, shipbuilding, and entertainment industries as well as in retail, manufacturing, transportation, and higher education. He maintains a broad practice that includes strategic advice, internal investigations, employment litigation, collective bargaining, training, human resources policies, and multistate compliance. A large portion of Jim’s practice includes defending clients before the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the District of Columbia Office of Human Rights, the Maryland Commission on Civil Rights, and in federal court litigation in the District of Columbia, Maryland, and Virginia, where he consistently achieves favorable outcomes for businesses and organizations wrongly accused of unlawful employment practices.
Over his career, Jim has developed deep expertise in counseling employers regarding reductions in force, wage and hour compliance, labor arbitrations, reasonable accommodations, leave management, collective bargaining, union organizing, and covenants not to compete. Jim is frequently called upon to handle internal investigations involving allegations of harassment and retaliation and to advise corporate leaders on highly sensitive personnel actions involving alleged wrongdoing by company officials. He also has extensive experience with the unique employment law challenges affecting federal contractors. Jim began his career as a labor and employment lawyer in the Washington office of an international law firm, where he advised and represented clients in collective bargaining, Department of Labor investigations, NLRB hearings, union organizing campaigns, and class and collective actions.
