A soldier's discipline. A trial lawyer's fight.

An Army infantryman who became a trial lawyer

Cloyd served 24 years in the United States Army, retiring as a Lieutenant Colonel, and spent roughly half of that career overseas. He is Airborne, Air Assault and Ranger qualified, and holds the Bronze Star, the Order of Saint Maurice at Centurion level, and the Draper Leadership Award.

He deployed to Bosnia; to Iraq for seventeen months; to Afghanistan more than once; and to Egypt, where he was posted on 11 September 2001.

What carried over is not the imagery. In his own words, he built the firm around a disciplined trial-preparation approach modeled on planning a military operation — the habit of preparing completely for something that may or may not happen, and of being the person who has already thought about what goes wrong.

He taught at West Point

Before Iraq, Smith served on the faculty at the United States Military Academy at West Point. He volunteered from there for a military transition team — a year embedded with Iraqi units, and by his own account an assignment few officers wanted. His account of it sits in the U.S. Army's own oral-history archive.

He was trying cases before he was a lawyer

Selected to serve as a Circuit Court Clerk, he had won seven bench trials and one felony jury trial before he was a barred attorney. Then, shortly after beginning to practice, he won a case of first impression in the Supreme Court of Virginia.

Why he practices these two areas

Both pillars of the firm involve the same injury: someone was harmed by a person or institution that owed them care, and that institution would prefer the matter go quietly. Personal injury and fiduciary litigation look different on paper and are tried the same way.

The case of first impression

The question had never been decided in the Commonwealth: can a trustee use an arbitration clause inside a trust to pull a beneficiary out of court? Cloyd argued it could not — that a trust is not a contract enforceable under the Federal Arbitration Act or the Virginia Uniform Arbitration Act. The Supreme Court of Virginia agreed.

Boyle v. Anderson, 301 Va. 52, 871 S.E.2d 226 (2022) · Record No. 210382 · decided 14 April 2022

The result is now the rule for every family in the Commonwealth facing the same clause.

What opposing counsel said

After a judge held him in contempt, opposing counsel told him his problem was that he cares too much and fights too hard. It was not offered as a compliment, and it was not said by someone on his side.

The firm has kept it anyway. It is an accurate description of how these cases get prepared — and it is worth more coming from the lawyer on the other side of the table than it would from a friend.

Admitted to practice

• Virginia — 2020
• District of Columbia — 2022

Education

• Juris Doctor, 2019 — Catholic University of America, Columbus School of Law
• Master of Military Art and Science, 2009 — Command and General Staff College
• Master of Arts, History, 2005 — Texas A&M University
• Bachelor of Science, Secondary Education, 1996 — Slippery Rock University
• Associate of Arts, 1992 — New Mexico Military Institute

The order is worth reading twice. He finished a military institute associate's in 1992 and a law degree in 2019 — the twenty-seven years between them were spent in uniform, and two of the degrees in that span are the Army's own.

Where he practices

Smith Trial Law PLLC is based in Fredericksburg, Virginia, and serves clients across Virginia and the District of Columbia — with a particular focus on the I-95 corridor between Washington and Richmond.

Who works on your matter

Cloyd tries the cases himself. The legal assistants, law clerk and paralegal who prepare them — and who you will speak to when you call — are on the Our Team page.