Julia Thomas Gravely

Julia Henry helps individuals and families navigate the emotional and legal complexities of estate planning, estate administration, and elder law.

Her practice focuses on the design and administration of trusts and estates, including self-settled and third-party special needs and supplemental needs trusts. Julia’s approach is grounded in a careful assessment of each client’s unique family makeup, financial picture, and long-term goals. She believes effective planning should be designed to adapt as families grow and circumstances change.

Julia works across the full range of planning strategies, from basic wills and revocable trusts to more sophisticated structures including incapacity planning, and irrevocable, generation-skipping, and dynasty trusts. Her experience also includes irrevocable life insurance trusts, intentionally defective grantor trusts, qualified domestic trusts for non-citizen spouses, charitable planning vehicles, and family entities designed to reduce wealth transfer taxes and ease the administrative burden on future generations.

For clients with existing plans, Julia helps modify and decant trusts to keep pace with changes in the law and shifting circumstances. She also guides families through the administration of estates of all sizes after the loss of a loved one and with the ongoing work of administering the trusts created to benefit their cherished family members.

With years of experience in both Virginia and North Carolina, Julia has served a broad range of clients, from young professionals and entrepreneurs to high-net-worth individuals and families. Clients value her ability to pair technical precision with empathy and practical, plain-language communication, offering clear guidance through what can often be an emotional process.

When not assisting clients, Julia enjoys finding the next adventure with her husband and son and can often be found traveling, singing, tap dancing, and photographing the world around her.