Thomas B. Almy

Thomas B. Almy is a Senior Partner in Dombroff Gilmore Jaques & French and was an original member of the Firm upon its creation in 1994. He concentrates his practice on the aviation industry, including litigation (trial and appellate), NTSB investigations, insurance coverage, and employee related matters.

Mr. Almy is a graduate of Brown University (BA, 1971), and Georgetown University Law Center (JD, 1978). Mr. Almy was an E. Barrett Prettyman Fellow at Georgetown University Law Center (1978 - 1980) and received an LLM in Trial Advocacy (1983). From 1971 through 1975, Mr. Almy served in the U.S. Navy as a Surface Warfare Officer.

Mr. Almy began his legal career in private practice with Haight, Gardner, Poor & Havens doing aviation litigation. He was a member of the litigation team representing the aircraft manufacturer in the C-5A Vietnam Babylift crash litigation. In 1985 he then moved to the United States Department of Justice, Aviation Section. While at the Justice Department, Mr. Almy represented the FAA, all the military services, including the reserves and the Civil Air Patrol, the National Weather Service, the Department of Forestry, and the FBI. During his last two years at the Justice Department, Mr. Almy was a Senior Aviation Counsel responsible for supervising multiple aviation cases involving various aviation components of the United States Government, and was lead counsel for the United States in both Northwest Airlines accidents at Detroit. Additionally, Mr. Almy was an active participant in the executive branch interagency effort to achieve the U.S. Senate’s approval of Protocols 3 and 4 to the Warsaw Convention and to develop a comprehensive operations manual for all “public use” aircraft.

Mr. Almy re-entered private practice in 1991, where he continues to focus on the aviation industry. He represents airlines and aircraft operators, air traffic control service providers and aircraft equipment manufacturers in litigation, including trials and numerous government investigations. This representation has included: USAir crashes in New York (Flight 405) and Charlotte (Flight 1016); Swissair crash near Nova Scotia (Flight 111); Alaska Airlines crash near Los Angeles (Flight 261) (all wrongful death cases from the flight); Sunjet crash (Payne Stewart Charter flight); Circuit City crash near Pueblo, Colorado (Citation); Colgan Air crash near Hyannis (Flight 9446); and, the Presidential Airways crash in Afghanistan.