Thomas Powell is a principal attorney in Offit Kurman’s Construction Law practice group. He is an experienced trial attorney with a background in contracts, construction, commercial litigation, and government contracts. An engineer and a lawyer, Mr. Powell received his legal training from George Washington University’s National Law Center where he received his law degree (J.D.) in 1987. In 2002, Mr. Powell received a Master of Laws in Trial Advocacy degree (L.L.M.) from Temple University. He also holds Bachelor's and Master's degrees in Civil Engineering from Villanova University (B.C.E. 1979) and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (M.S.C.E. 1981), respectively.
Mr. Powell’s appears regularly before various state and federal courts as well as arbitral tribunals. He has represented individuals, businesses, corporations, and foreign government entities on matters valued from a few thousand to more than one billion dollars. Mr. Powell’s involvement has included litigation on the construction of the Marriott Marquis Hotel in Times Square in New York City, the Capital One Arena and the District Wharf in Washington D.C., and the Superstorm Sandy insurance litigation in Federal Court in New York City. Mr. Powell also represented the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia on the construction of the Cultural Mission of the Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia in Fairfax, Virginia.
Since 1992, Mr. Powell has taught “Legal Aspects of Architecture, Engineering and the Construction Process” at the University of Maryland in the A. James Clark School of Civil Engineering’s Graduate Program in Construction Management. Mr. Powell is an instructor at the Georgetown University Law Center/National Institute of Trial Advocacy (NITA) annual trial advocacy and deposition programs and he also has taught at the American Bar Association Forum on the Construction Industry’s Trial Advocacy Program.
Prior to practicing law, Mr. Powell worked as a civil engineer for a well-known international construction company engaged in heavy industrial design, manufacture, and construction. He has lived and worked in the United States, the United Kingdom, and the United Arab Emirates, and his engineering roles have included draftsman, design engineer, project engineer, and resident engineer on-site in the United Arab Emirates