Background
He was born in Lunenburg County, Virginia and studied law at The University of Virginia.
He was born in Lunenburg County, Virginia and studied law at The University of Virginia.
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. University of Virginia School of Law.
After having practiced law for more than twenty years in southside Virginia and having served as a state senator, he moved both his family and his law practice to the state capital of Richmond during the depression. lieutenant was during this period that he undertook a civil rights case representing Fred Wallace, an African American law student at Harvard University who had been charged in Prince Edward County, Virginia, where he had been doing civil rights work, with multiple misdemeanors and a felony. Although Allen approached white lawyers for assistance in Wallace’s defense, none would associate themselves in the case.
After failing in his attempt to remove the case to federal court and after exhausting his appeals to the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit and the United States Supreme Court, Allen reached an agreement with the prosecutor whereby the felony and some of the misdemeanors were dismissed and the remaining misdemeanors concluded through the payment of small fines.
Thereafter, Mr. Wallace graduated from law school and obtained his license to practice law in New York State. In recognition of his work in the Wallace case, The American College of Trial Lawyers gave Allen its first Award for Courageous Advocacy.
In 1971, Allen undertook the appeal of a North Carolina homeowner who had brought a Federal Tort Claims Acting action against the United States for property damage to his house allegedly caused by the sonic boom of military aircraft carrying out a training mission over North Carolina. He argued the case before the United States Supreme Court just months before his death at age 87.
Allen served as President of the Richmond Bar Association in 1959 and was a founding member and President of the Virginia Trial Lawyers Association (1961).
He was also elected a fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers and a fellow of the International Academy of Trial Lawyers.