Craig D. Bell

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Craig is a nationally recognized tax attorney and chair of the firm's tax and employee benefits department. He also leads the firm's state and local tax, and tax litigation practice areas. Craig serves as the firm's lead tax litigator in both trial and appellate federal, state, and local tax disputes. He has substantial experience in all areas of tax law with a primary emphasis on state and local taxation, and civil and criminal tax litigation at federal, state and local levels.

Craig also regularly represents and advises businesses and their owners on matters relating to tax strategies for mergers and acquisitions; joint ventures; purchase and sale of business entities and divisions; business reorganizations; the negotiation, design and implementation of business expansion and relocation economic incentive programs and legislation; state tax legislation lobby activities; and other business transaction services. He is a co-founder and board chairman of Village Bank Financial Corporation, a publicly held commercial bank headquartered in Richmond.

Craig graduated from the State University of New York at Buffalo School of Law in 1983, serving as vice justice of Phi Alpha Delta from 1982 to 1983 and earning an Outstanding Member Award. He received his post-doctorate masters of law and taxation from the Marshall-Wythe School of Law at the College of William and Mary in 1986. He also graduated from Syracuse University, magna cum laude, in 1979; and received his masters in business administration from Syracuse University in 1980. There he served as president from 1978 to 1979 and vice president from 1977 to 1978 of Delta Nu Alpha, Syracuse University Chapter, International Transportation Management Association. Craig also was a member of Beta Gamma Sigma, an international management honors fraternity. He is a recipient of the following awards: Salzberg Outstanding Transportation Management Student Award, 1978, National Defense Transportation Association Outstanding Student Award, 1979, University Honors Program Graduate, 1979.

Craig served as a Judge Advocate General in the U.S. Army for six years on active duty. Upon leaving active duty he joined the Army Reserves where he was assigned to the U.S. Army's law school and served as the Tax and Estate Planning Advisor to the Judge Advocate General of the U.S. Army. He was selected to lead the Department of Defense emergency legal office created to provide legal assistance to victims and their families from the 9-11 Pentagon Attack. Craig retired from the Army Reserves in 2006 as a Lieutenant Colonel after completing 27 years of service.

He is a Fellow of the American College of Tax Counsel and serves on the William and Mary Tax Conference Advisory Council. Craig is a past chair of both the Virginia State Bar Section of Taxation and Virginia Bar Association Tax Section, as well as past chair of the Virginia State Bar Military Law Section. He is a member of the J. Edgar Murdock Inn of Court (U.S. Tax Court).

Craig serves an adjunct professor for the Marshall-Wythe School of Law at the College of William and Mary where he teaches the federal tax litigation course, and a former adjunct professor for Virginia Commonwealth University's master in taxation program where he taught state and local taxation. He is a frequent lecturer on federal, state and local tax topics for a number of law and accounting professional organizations including the T.C. Williams School of Law at the University of Richmond, the Virginia Law Foundation of the Virginia Bar Association and the Virginia State Bar, the Annual University of Virginia Conference on Federal Taxation, the Annual William and Mary Tax Conference, the U.S. Army Judge Advocate General's Leadership Center and School, the Institute for Management Accountants, the Virginia Society of Certified Public Accountants, and a number of other law and accounting professional organizations.

Craig also serves as director emeritus of the Community Tax Law Project, a charitable nonprofit organization that provides low income Virginia taxpayers with pro bono legal representation in federal, state and local tax disputes, and he is a past president of the organization. He is also a director on the Virginia Endowment Fund of the United Methodist Church, its former chairman, and he also serves as its tax counsel, and as a member of its Executive and Investment Committees. Craig serves as a board trustee for the Virginia War Museum and the Henricus Historical Park Foundation.

Craig has authored a variety of articles involving all aspects of state and local tax issues for State and Local Taxes Weekly published by the Research Institute of America; the Multistate Tax Report, published by BNA’s Tax Management, Inc.; and for State Tax Notes, published by Tax Analysts, Inc.