About Patrick Gallagher
Patrick Gallagher was born and raised in southern West Virginia. He received his B.A. in Economics, magna cum laude, from Elon University in 2002, then attended law school at Wake Forest University, graduating cum laude in 2005. In law school he participated in mock trial, Moot Court, and Law Review. After graduation he returned to West Virginia and worked for a large defense firm handling consumer finance, deliberate intent, and Mine Safety Health Administration cases. In 2008 he moved to Wilmington, Delaware, joining a large firm practicing primarily in corporate litigation before the Delaware Court of Chancery.
In 2009 he moved to Dover and joined a small firm focused on personal injury, family law, and criminal defense, later expanding into estates, bankruptcy, real estate litigation, landlord/tenant issues, civil rights, employment law, and small business representation. Pat is currently the Managing Director of Jacobs & Crumplar, focusing on personal injury, employment discrimination, and civil rights. He has litigated at every level of the Delaware courts, including the Delaware Supreme Court, and regularly practices in the Federal District Court for the District of Delaware. He has served on the Board of Directors of Delaware's Community Legal Aid Society, the Board of the Kent County Bar Association, the Executive Committee of the Delaware State Bar Association, the Delaware Supreme Court's Board of Bar Examiners (associate member), and as a statewide co-chair for the Delaware Combined Campaign for Justice.
Proven verdicts and settlements at Jacobs & Crumplar
These results are credited to Jacobs & Crumplar. A result appears under an attorney's own name only when a published source names them as counsel on the case.
Thomas Crumplar and co-counsel secured a $77.425 million trust for 146 survivors of clergy sexual abuse as part of the Catholic Diocese of Wilmington's Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization in 2011.
A Kent County jury awarded John Vai $63 million against defrocked priest Francis DeLuca and St. Elizabeth's Parish in Wilmington after finding both liable for childhood sexual abuse that began in the 1960s, producing what victim advocates called the largest compensatory verdict in U.S. clergy abuse history and the first time an individual parish was held accountable.
A Delaware jury returned a unanimous $9 million verdict on July 23, 2025, in the first case ever tried over asbestos-contaminated shotgun shells, holding DuPont and Remington's successor liable for the mesothelioma death of Eugene Schoepke, an 84-year-old Illinois farmer and lifelong hunter.
Delaware agreed in December 2017 to pay $7.55 million to settle a federal suit over the February 2017 uprising at the James T. Vaughn Correctional Center in Smyrna, where Lt. Steven Floyd was killed and other officers were held hostage. The plaintiffs said years of understaffing and forced overtime left the prison exposed. The money was divided among 11 claimants and the split was not made public, so the figure is an aggregate. The state denied wrongdoing.
Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. Each case is unique and depends on its own facts.
