Nelson James Roach

Nelson J. Roach is a partner at the Roach Law Firm in Daingerfield, Texas. Over the last 30 years, Nelson has represented thousands of clients in many groundbreaking cases.

In 1987, at age 28, he was made lead counsel of the Lone Star Steel Toxic Tort Litigation, an occupational-disease case involving more than 5,000 steelworkers against 600 companies that supplied products to the steel mill.

While in his 30s, Nelson served as lead counsel representing more than 300 rubber workers at the Red River Army Depot in Hooks, Texas. They took legal action against equipment suppliers and rubber companies related to occupational cancers and lung diseases.

In 2021, Nelson won $730 million in a case involving a collision between a passenger car and an oversize-cargo truck hauling a propeller for a U.S. Navy nuclear submarine. It was the fourth-largest jury verdict in the United States and third-largest in Texas that year.

Nelson also represented the inventor of the process banks use to electronically clear checks in a series of patent-infringement cases against some of the largest and most powerful financial institutions in the nation. In that litigation, he and two other lawyers in his firm obtained a judgment against U.S. Bank.

Nelson was lead counsel in a class action against Phelps Dodge Corporation related to lead, arsenic, and cadmium contamination of homes in Blackwell, Oklahoma. The case resulted in the cleanup of hundreds of properties throughout the community.

Nelson has served on the national steering committees of several defective drug and medical device mass tort cases.

He has also represented many injured clients in cases involving explosions, confined-space accidents, farm and industrial equipment accidents, defective automobiles, workplace injuries, car wrecks, and truck wrecks.

In 2009, Nelson served as President of the Texas Trial Lawyers Association (TTLA) and has been a member of the TTLA Executive Committee and TTLA Legislative Management Committee from 2010-2020. Over the last 10 years, as part of his TTLA legislative duties, Nelson has testified before the Texas Legislature more than 100 times on behalf of injured Texans.

Nelson is a member of the American Board of Trial Advocates (ABOTA), an invitation-only trial organization founded to promote ethical and technical standards of practice in the field of advocacy. Membership in ABOTA requires substantial civil jury trial to verdict experience, as well as high personal character and honorable reputation.

Nelson has an AV rating with Martindale-Hubbell, which is the highest rating level based on superior ethics, as well as the desired level of professional experience. Nelson was named on the Texas Super Lawyers list by Super Lawyers, a division of Thomson Reuters, from 2009-2015 and 2018-2022.

He obtained both his undergraduate and law degree with honors from Baylor University, and after law school served as a briefing clerk for the Honorable Robert Campbell of The Supreme Court of Texas.

Nelson is married to the former Misty Morris and they have a step son, Andrew.

In his spare time, Nelson enjoys hunting, fishing and watching wildlife on his ranch located between Lone Star and Pittsburg. As a result of his conservation work on his ranch, Nelson was awarded the 2018 Land Steward Award by the Texas Wildlife Society and the 2018 Pineywoods Lone Star Land Steward Award by the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department.