About Peter J.
Peter J. Thompson built a career that bridges courtroom work and classroom instruction. He began his formal legal education at Villanova University School of Law, earning his J.D. in 1998. He later returned to study advocacy more deliberately, completing an LL.M. in Trial Advocacy at Temple University Beasley School of Law in 2004. Before law, he trained as an educator, taking an M.Ed. in Secondary Education and Teaching from Widener University in 1994 after a B.A. from Villanova in 1992.
Thompson entered practice the year he graduated from law school, joining the Defenders Association of Philadelphia as a trial and appellate lawyer in 1998. Over a decade there he handled criminal matters at trial and on appeal, and his work expanded into immigration issues. In 2008 he became director of the Defender Immigration Project, steering defense counsel through the intersection of criminal and immigration law.
His career moved into academia while keeping one foot in active practice. He served as an adjunct professor in Villanova’s political science department in 2008. Later he joined Charlotte School of Law as an associate professor of law and founded its Immigration Law Clinic in 2012, a practical training program for students and a service for community members.
Thompson also participates in federal appointment systems. He was added to the Criminal Justice Act Panel for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania in 2015, and he has lectured for the National Academy of Continuing Legal Education. Those roles reflect continuing work on trial practice and the procedural issues that arise when criminal and immigration systems intersect.
He is admitted to practice in Pennsylvania and has appearances before federal courts including the U.S. Supreme Court, the Third and Fifth Circuits, and the United States District Courts for the Eastern and Middle Districts of Pennsylvania. He maintains memberships in the State Bar of Pennsylvania (1998–present), the Philadelphia Bar Association, the Federal Bar Association, the American Immigration Lawyers Association, the Pennsylvania Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, and the Philadelphia Criminal Law Inn of Court.
Thompson now leads Thompson Law Advocates, P.C., a practice that reflects his years as a defender and a legal educator. He divides his time between courtroom representation and supervising litigation that often touches on criminal defense and immigration consequences. He currently practices criminal defense and immigration law at Thompson Law Advocates, P.C.
