Timothy Burke

Timothy A. Burke has experience in a wide variety of practice areas, from personal injury to criminal defense, and corporate securities fraud to class actions. At Kline & Specter he focuses on mass torts and catastrophic personal injury. Most recently in March 2025, Burke secured a $12 million settlement from a cement company for the widow of a contract ironworker who fell to his death while attempting to install wood planking across an open walkway during maintenance work on a cement cooler at a Pennsylvania mine. Michael Pittman, a thirty-three-year-old husband and father of two, had eight years' experience when he fell 23 feet to his death falling through an opening in a walkway on July 26, 2021. Pittman was not wearing a safety harness when he fell.

However, the cement company did not have proper safety anchors in the area above the cement coolers. Burke came to Kline & Specter from another Center City law firm where he handled complex products liability and toxic tort litigation. In his five years at the firm, he was co-counsel on numerous benzene toxic tort trials as well as supervising all pre-trial and discovery aspects of that litigation for a nationwide docket of product liability cases. Prior to that, Burke was in the criminal courts working as a public defender for the Ninth Circuit Public Defender's Office in Charleston, S.C.

He represented indigent clients charged with crimes ranging from minor offenses to serious felonies and managed a caseload of nearly 100 clients. Burke began his career in the Charleston office of Motley Rice, where he worked as an attorney representing shareholder clients in the firm's Corporate Securities Fraud division. His legal advocacy skills have earned Burke recognition from 2020-2026 as a Rising Star by Super Lawyers, the independent survey group that selects the top 2.5 percent of attorneys in Pennsylvania younger than 40. He also was chosen by the National Trial Lawyers for inclusion in its "Top 40 Under 40" in Pennsylvania for plaintiffs' civil litigation.

And he was named by Best Lawyers in America 2024 and 2025 among its "Ones to Watch," which recognizes lawyers who are earlier in their careers for their outstanding professional excellence in private practice. Burke earned his undergraduate degree from Texas A&M University and his law degree from the Charles Widger School of Law at Villanova University. During law school, he worked as a judicial extern and law clerk for Philadelphia Common Pleas Judge Mark Bernstein. Burke also studied at the Sorbonne in Paris as part of Cornell Law School's Summer Institute for International and Comparative Corporate Law.

The Texas native is licensed to practice in Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey and South Carolina. In December 2023, he was elected to a three-year term on the board of directors of the Philadelphia LGBTQ Bar Association, a 180-member organization that supports Philadelphia's LGBTQ+ legal community. Burke, who was an Eagle Scout, is a member of the Philadelphia Trial Lawyers Association, the American Association for Justice, Pennsylvania Association for Justice, and the Philadelphia Bar Association. He is also an active member of the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School Inn of Court.