Roy J. Baldwin, Esq.
Firm founder Roy J. Baldwin, Esq. was born in Nacogdoches, Texas, and raised in Lincoln, Nebraska. He holds a B.A. in Political Science from the University of Nebraska – Lincoln and a Juris Doctor from The George Washington University School of Law in Washington, D.C. He has lived in Virginia since 1975. He is married and his son, Nathaniel, is an associate of the firm.
Since 1976, Mr. Baldwin has been a member of the American Bar Association, the Virginia State Bar, and the Family Law Section of the Fairfax Bar Association. He is admitted to practice law in Virginia State and Federal courts. He has held numerous positions in the Fairfax Bar Association, has served as a moot court judge for his alma mater, The George Washington University School of Law, is a multi-year recipient of Martindale-Hubbell’s Client Distinction Award, and in 2016 was named a Capital Region Premiere Lawyer by the Wall Street Journal.
Mr. Baldwin has held several positions with the Town of Vienna, most recently as a member of the Town Board of Architectural Review. A longtime member of the Church of the Holy Comforter in Vienna, he has served as a Sunday School teacher, a lay minister, and as a member of the vestry.
Representative Cases:
Case results depend upon a variety of factors unique to each case and do not guarantee or predict a similar result in any future case undertaken by the lawyer.
- Represented wife/mother in divorce in the Fairfax County Circuit Court featuring intensely contested international custody battle maintained by father in Pakistan who was funded by an international organization. After a five day custody hearing against a nationally known expert in the field, achieved a complete victory for client, including an award of a substantial portion of her attorneys’ fees. Child has since graduated from college.
- Represented the orphaned minor child of a 9/11 victim (passenger on plane flown into Pentagon) on a pro bono basis in the Fairfax County Circuit Court. Responsible for assembling nearly $2M in government and private aid for the child, who has since graduated from college.
- Represented husband in divorce in Fairfax Circuit Court involving approximately $6M in marital assets. Case included a four day property and support hearing, use of experts, and special considerations of issues relating to the economic down turn of the late 2000’s.
- Represented wife/mother in interstate custody proceeding in Pittsylvania County J&DR and Circuit Courts involving competing claims to jurisdiction by an Indian Tribal Court in Wisconsin and the courts in Virginia.
- Represented ex-wife/mother in fiercely contested custody case over the course of ten years in multiple Northern Virginia courts. Case involved multiple experts, false & induced allegations of parental abuse by children, false statements by husband to Department of Social Services, and successful defense of husband’s appeal to Virginia Court of Appeals resulting in court-ordered attorney’s fee of almost $20k (collected by garnishment).
- Represented military member ex-husband/father in a long-running contested domestic relations case in Loudoun County, including successfully obtaining a protective order against abusive ex-wife, successfully obtaining a divorce without payment of spousal support, and successfully obtaining (and over the course of the following several years of litigation, retaining) custody of his two children.
Samuel A. Leven, Esq.
Senior Associate Samuel A. Leven, Esq. has been working for The Baldwin Law Firm since December of 2010. A foreign service child, Sam spent his early childhood in Germany, Hungary, and Sweden, before settling down in Virginia at the age of nine, where he has remained ever since. Sam attended Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology and then moved on to the University of Virginia for both college and law school. While at U.Va., Sam was a trial “counsel” responsible for defending fellow students facing expulsion for alleged violations of the school’s Honor Code. In law school he participated in clinics which included representation of death row inmates during their post-conviction process and appellate litigation.
After graduating from law school, Sam served in a fellowship with the Public Defender’s Office in Loudoun County where he represented indigent defendants facing jailable misdemeanor charges. During his time in this fellowship, Sam prevailed in his very first trial, having been able to show that his client’s arrest had been unlawful and as such the resisting arrest charge the client was facing had to be dismissed.
After his fellowship, Sam joined The Baldwin Law Firm where he developed his own niche practice within the firm. In addition to handling family law cases (including adoption), Sam serves as the Firm’s appellate lawyer and takes appeals of almost all types of civil cases to the Court of Appeals of Virginia and Virginia Supreme Court, regardless of whether or not he (or the Firm) was involved in the case at trial – and in many cases, regardless of whether or not the Firm even practices that area of law at the trial court level at all. Sam also handles debt collection matters (representing both creditors and debtors) and some contract disputes and has accepted a number of pro bono appointments in civil, landlord/tenant, and protective order matters through Legal Services of Northern Virginia. Sam is admitted to the Bar in Virginia and Washington, DC, and is additionally admitted to practice in the federal Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals and the United States Supreme Court.
Sam also has a particular interest in promoting a broader understanding of the law amongst the general public, and as a result he has written extensively about the law. That has included having had an article on mandatory imputation of income in support cases published in the June, 2017 edition of Virginia Lawyer Magazine (the official publication of the Virginia State Bar), and having formerly maintained a legal blog titled The Law is Your Friend.
Sam also loves working with the legal community to help enhance the practice of law. In 2022, the Virginia Court of Appeals dramatically expanded its jurisdiction and had a substantial overhaul of its rules. As attorneys across Virginia worked to catch up to the new changes, Sam rapidly adapted to the new rules and ended up serving as one of the instructors at the Fairfax Bar Associaton’s continuing legal education course for other attorneys about how to practice law under the updated Court of Appeals rules and jurisdiction. After that program, Sam has continued to help guide other attorneys in navigating the appellate process, and the Winter 2023/2024 edition of the Virginia Family Law Quarterly published Sam’s article providing guidance to family law trial attorneys across Virginia on how to properly preserve their cases for appeal.
Sam is an active member of the Fairfax Bar Association (FBA). Within the FBA, Sam currently serves on the Executive Committee of the FBA’s Board of Directors, along with the FBA’s Circuit Court Committee (including its Domestic Relations Sub-Committee) and Legislative Committee (which he Chaired from 2018 to 2020), and has in the past served on the FBA’s Lawyer Referral Service Committee. In these capacities, Sam helped prepare the 2015 version of the Fairfax County Pro Se Divorce Packet, was a named contributor to the 2018 version of the Fairfax Circuit Court Practice Manual, and has been a presenter in several of the Domestic Relations Sub-Committee’s “brown bag lunch series” legal education presentations. Sam also serves as a motions conciliator with the FBA’s motions conciliation program – a free mediation program that seeks to resolve certain contested motions on the Fairfax Circuit Court’s Friday Motions Day docket.
Sam is also an active member of the Virginia Trial Lawyers Association – particularly its Family Law and Appellate Litigation Sections – and, since June of 2017, Sam has been elected by the Virginia State Bar Council to serve on a District Committee. District Committees are a core component of the Virginia State Bar’s disciplinary system, as District Committees (and their subcommittees) oversee investigations of complaints of misconduct against attorneys, adjudicate the claims, refer cases to the statewide Disciplinary Board where a sanction of suspension or disbarment might be warranted, and issue lesser sanctions. In this role, Sam is helping to preserve the integrity of the legal profession in Virginia, and protect the public from unethical conduct by attorneys.
Sam has also received recognition for his work on behalf of clients, including being given a Martindale-Hubbell Client Champion Gold designation (formerly known as the Client Distinction Award) every year since 2013, and having been named as a Virginia and DC-region “Rising Star” by Super Lawyers Magazine every year since 2018. These awards are based on a combination of verified client ratings and recognition from fellow attorneys, and are designed to reflect a high level of skill displayed both in litigation and in meeting client needs and goals.
At home, Sam is married with two children and one dog. His passions include politics, the Washington Nationals, and running around to his kids’ varied sports and activities. He plays clarinet with the Main Street Community Band in the City of Fairfax Band Association and serves as an Assistant Den Leader for his son’s Cub Scout Den.
Representative Cases:
Case results depend upon a variety of factors unique to each case and do not guarantee or predict a similar result in any future case undertaken by the lawyer.
- Represented husband in appeal to Virginia Court of Appeals from Loudoun County Circuit Court ruling requiring distribution of the parties’ incorporated business’s assets and ordering client to be personally responsible for debts owed by the business. Successfully obtained reversal of those rulings and further obtained ruling that trial court must re-do its spousal support and child support determinations. Ruling stands to save client hundreds of thousands of dollars.
- Represented father in appeal to Virginia Court of Appeals of Alexandria Circuit Court ruling that he could not modify his child support. Successfully obtained a Court of Appeals ruling in client’s favor and reversal of the trial court in a published opinion.
- Represented a debtor at trial in the Loudoun County General District Court who was being sued by a debt collector for more than $13,000 in unpaid credit card debt. Successfully objected to admission of multiple critical pieces of evidence for plaintiff and had case dismissed on a motion to strike at the conclusion of the plaintiff’s presentation.
- Represented a teacher’s aide in the Fairfax County Circuit Court, pro bono, whose ex-fiancé had fraudulently signed her name to a loan application for a substantial loan without her knowledge and consent. Successfully obtained substantial judgment against ex-fiancé and defeated lawsuit against her by lender.
- Represented former wife in an appeal by her former husband challenging an equitable distribution award to her of more than $50,000. Successfully utilized complex appellate litigation rules and case law to obtain complete victory for client – including both a summary affirmance of the trial court’s award and an award to client of all of her appellate attorneys’ fees.
- Represented plaintiff spouse in one of the earliest same-sex divorces in Fairfax County, taking case to a swift conclusion despite judicial unfamiliarity with how to handle the process and state-mandated forms that had not yet been updated to reflect the new legalities of same-sex marriage.
- Represented step-father in his effort to adopt his sixteen year old step-daughter in the Loudoun County Circuit Court despite estranged biological father’s unexplained rejection of daughter’s request that he consent to the adoption. Successfully argued that biological father had legally waived his right to object to the adoption, resulting in the adoption being granted.
- Represented father in action filed against him by the Virginia Division of Child Support Enforcement (DCSE) in 2012 in the Fauquier County Juvenile and Domestic Relations District Court seeking to charge him for arrears arising from child support dating to the late 1980’s and early 1990’s. Successfully had most of case dismissed with a Plea in Bar utilizing newly developed case law setting a 20 year statute of limitations, and had remainder of case dismissed on a motion to strike at trial when mother was compelled to admit on cross-examination that she had received payments she had failed to report to DCSE.
Nathaniel M. Baldwin, Esq.
A native of Fairfax County, Associate Attorney Nathaniel M. Baldwin, Esq. studied Government at the College of William and Mary then worked for three years as a staffer for several elected officials and candidates for office in Northern Virginia.
Nathaniel received his J.D. from the West Virginia University College of Law, where he participated in the Animal Law Society and competed in the National Animal Law Competition in Portland, Oregon. Continuing his interest in the political process, Nathaniel also served as Elections Commissioner for the WVU Law Student Bar Association.
Nathaniel is a member of the Virginia State Bar and the Fairfax Bar Association, and frequently contributes his time to the Uncontested Divorce and Consumer Law pro bono programs administered by Legal Services of Northern Virginia. When not in the office, Nathaniel can likely be found manning 3rd base for the FBA Young Lawyers softball team or walking the dogs at the Fairfax County Animal Shelter.
Representative Cases:
Case results depend upon a variety of factors unique to each case and do not guarantee or predict a similar result in any future case undertaken by the lawyer.
- Represented father in multi-day custody relocation trial in the Fairfax County Circuit Court wherein the mother was seeking to permanently relocate to a foreign country with the parties’ two minor children. Successfully obtained an order forbidding the relocation, and requiring the mother to reimburse the father’s attorneys’ fees.
- Represented husband in effort to expunge his arrest record in the Loudoun County Circuit Court after he had been falsely accused of rape by his estranged wife. Successfully expunged his record before the arrest could harm client’s security clearance.