Toccara M. Nelson

With the client's experience always top of mind, Toccara Nelson helps both public and private companies with sensitive, high-profile government and internal investigations. She has conducted factual analyses and witness interviews for Fortune and Global 500 companies and institutions within the health care, data privacy, education, and retail sectors.

Toccara has helped companies navigate cutting-edge data issues, conducting analysis on data breach settlement negotiations, surveying laws on private intelligence gathering, and assisting investigations related to data privacy issues. She has also helped some of the world's top educational institutions navigate sensitive internal investigations and federal litigation by engaging in witness interviews, fact-finding, and other tasks. Additionally, Toccara has assisted the world’s top companies in developing and improving their compliance programs and helped defend healthcare institutions against False Claims Act (FCA) qui tam cases brought by whistleblowers.

Toccara has maintained an active pro bono practice since joining the firm, helping immigrants obtain asylum and Special Immigrant Juvenile Status, conducting legal research to promote environmental justice, providing research and writing support for criminal justice resentencing initiatives, and facilitating support for minority-owned businesses during the COVID-19 pandemic.

To Toccara, her community is her client. Toccara was a clinic member for the University of Virginia's Innocence Project, where she led investigations for incarceree post-conviction relief initiatives. She was a UVA-Community Working Group committee member, assessing ways to improve the university's relationship with its local community through employment, housing, education, and health care. She helped Charlottesville's Legal Aid Justice Center combat racial disparities in policing through police accountability measures. Toccara's community work earned her the University of Virginia's inaugural Gregory H. Swanson Award in 2018.