Walter Kelley
VerifiedAbout Walter Kelley
Walter Kelley is the Managing Partner and a Trial Attorney at Bernheim Kelley Car Accident & Personal Injury Lawyers, specializing in personal injury litigation. He has decades of experience.
Kelley earned his J.D. from New England School of Law and his B.S. in Kinesiology from the University of Massachusetts. He is admitted to practice in Massachusetts and before the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts.
He has been recognized in The Best Lawyers in America 2026 for Personal Injury Litigation and Product Liability Litigation. He is a member of the Massachusetts Bar Association, the Massachusetts Academy of Trial Attorneys (Board of Governors), the American Association for Justice, the Civil Justice Foundation, Public Justice, the National Trial Lawyers Association (Top 100 Trial Attorneys and Top 40 Trial Attorneys Under 40), the Plymouth County Bar Association, and the Plymouth District Bar Association.
Notable case results
A Suffolk County jury awarded $200 million in October 2023 -- the largest wrongful death award in Boston history -- against R.J. Reynolds for the lung cancer death of Rita Jones, who first received free Newport cigarettes as a teenager in 1964.
A Boston jury awarded $21 million to the widow of a Lynn man who died of lung cancer after taking up smoking at 13, when a salesman handed him a free pack of Marlboros, with the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court affirming the verdict in full in 2021.
Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. Each case is unique and depends on its own facts.
