J.D. Walker started his career in Alabama. Twenty-five years later his firm has offices in Miami, the Houston area, Pelham, and Washington D.C., a team of six attorneys, and a caseload that runs from family green cards to removal proceedings in front of the Board of Immigration Appeals. This month he was selected to appear on America's Top Lawyers, a televised series profiling legal professionals across the country.
The feature is being filmed at a Miami studio and will run as a full-length episode on the show. For Walker, it arrives after a decade of steady expansion: a boutique deportation defense practice that now represents clients from more than forty countries and has built its reputation on one of the hardest corners of U.S. immigration law, keeping people in the country when the government is trying to remove them.
From Birmingham bar to Brickell Avenue
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Walker studied at Birmingham School of Law and took an MBA from Amberton University. He is admitted to the Supreme Court of Alabama, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Alabama, the Executive Office for Immigration Review, the Board of Immigration Appeals, and the D.C. Court of Appeals. In Alabama he founded the Immigration Committee of the Birmingham Bar Association and served as its first chairman, a credential that still sets him apart from most deportation defense attorneys working the Southeast.
The firm's center of gravity is now Miami, at 1395 Brickell Avenue. From there it runs a second office in Stafford, Texas, a home office in Pelham, Alabama, and a Washington D.C. presence for appellate work. The team includes six immigration attorneys and support staff working in English and Spanish.
The practice: removal defense, family cases, appeals
Walker's firm handles the full range of immigration matters, but the work that defines it is removal defense. When Immigration and Customs Enforcement initiates proceedings, the response has to move quickly: bond motions, cancellation of removal applications, asylum claims, waivers, and, if the immigration judge rules against the client, appeals to the Board of Immigration Appeals and beyond.
The firm also carries a heavy family immigration practice: adjustment of status, consular processing, I-601A waivers, VAWA petitions for domestic violence survivors, and U-Visa certifications for crime victims. On the employment side it handles work visas, investor visas, and business-based petitions. It takes DACA renewals, Temporary Protected Status, and citizenship applications.
"Every deportation case represents a family, a dream, and a chance at freedom," Walker says. The firm's motto, printed across its materials, is blunter: "We Fight. We Win. We Deliver."
The television feature
J.D. Walker has been selected for the America's Top Lawyer television series.
America's Top Lawyers is produced by Inside Success Network and profiles attorneys across practice areas in full-length episodes, with syndication across streaming platforms and distribution to legal and business media. Walker's episode is being shot at a Miami studio and is scheduled to air as part of the current season.
For a removal defense lawyer, the visibility matters in a specific way. Families searching for help when a relative is in detention are often looking at a short list, late at night, under extreme pressure. A televised profile is not a substitute for a courtroom record, but it makes a firm easier to find, and in deportation work, speed is half the case.
What the growth looks like from the inside
Walker is building in two directions at once. The first is the practice itself, with the Brickell headquarters now supported by offices in three other jurisdictions and a team that can cover both trial-level removal proceedings and appellate briefing. The second is the J.D. Walker Immigration Foundation, which the firm has announced as a vehicle for free legal aid, housing support, and scholarships for immigrant families. The foundation is in its launch phase.
The business case for the multi-office model is straightforward. Immigration court backlogs mean cases sit for years. A firm that can take a client through a bond hearing in one jurisdiction, an appeal in another, and a family petition in a third keeps the work inside one relationship rather than handing it off. For clients who are already dealing with the hardest thing that has ever happened to them, that matters.
FAQ
Can you fight a removal order once deportation proceedings have started?
Yes. A removal defense lawyer can pursue several forms of relief in immigration court, including cancellation of removal, asylum, withholding of removal, adjustment of status if the client is eligible, and waivers of inadmissibility. If the immigration judge rules against the client, the case can be appealed to the Board of Immigration Appeals and, in some situations, to the federal circuit courts.
What does cancellation of removal actually require?
For non-permanent residents, the applicant generally has to show ten years of continuous physical presence in the United States, good moral character during that period, no disqualifying criminal history, and that removal would cause exceptional and extremely unusual hardship to a qualifying U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident spouse, parent, or child. Lawful permanent residents face a different standard and do not need to prove hardship.
How does family-based immigration work?
U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents can petition for certain family members to receive green cards. Immediate relatives of U.S. citizens, which includes spouses, unmarried children under 21, and parents, have no annual numerical cap. Other family categories, such as siblings of U.S. citizens and adult children, have caps and wait times that can run years or decades depending on country of origin.
What is America's Top Lawyers?
America's Top Lawyers is a television series produced by Inside Success Network that profiles attorneys across practice areas in full-length episodes. Each featured attorney is filmed at a studio and distributed across streaming platforms and legal and business media.
