Alumni Profile: Hugo Valverde ('05)

Many of Regent Law's 2,500+ alumni are presently working in human rights law or are involved in agencies and organizations dedicated to rescuing the enslaved, trafficked, and oppressed. We hope you enjoy reading the following alumni profiles which represent a small portion of our many alumni literally changing the world.

Hugo Valverde '05

Hugo attended Regent University School of Law feeling called to serve the immigrant community in the United States. Since graduating from Regent University he has lived out this calling. From 2005 - 2006 he was selected to serve as an attorney advisor to the Immigration Courts in Oakdale and New Orleans, Louisiana, and Memphis, Tennessee. The U.S. Department of Justice, Executive Office for Immigration Review selected him for this position under the U.S. Attorney General's Honors Program. In late 2006, he opened the private practice law firm of Valverde & Rowell P.C. with fellow Regent alumni, Barry Rowell, in Virginia Beach, Virginia.

Hugo is committed to the citizen-lawyer ideal. He served as co-chair of the Immigrant Outreach Committee of the Virginia State Bar Young Lawyers Conference, where he helped coordinate several educational opportunities on immigration for attorneys and the community. In 2007, he served a legal advisor to the Illegal Immigration and Crimes Task Force of the Virginia Crimes Commission. In 2008, Hugo received the R. Edwin Burnette Jr. Young Lawyer of the Year Award from the Virginia State Bar Young Lawyers Conference. He is an active advocate in the Hispanic community, serving on the Board of the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, participating annually in the Virginia Hispanic College Institute, helping to establish educational opportunities in the form of scholarships for Hispanic youth, or sponsoring Hispanic children to attend local summer soccer camps.

In the fall of 2009, Hugo began to teach immmigration law at Regent University, and recently in Spring of 2012, he began teaching an immigration law practicum. Through the practicum, Regent law students are representing asylum applicants, victims of domestic violence, and victims of serious crimes in preparing and submitting immigration applications on a pro bono basis. Hugo's passion for immigration law stems from his own family's immigration experience. His father and mother came to the United States from Peru fleeing political persecution, and as he grew up, Hugo spent many summers in Peru. Hugo uses his experience growing up in an immigrant family and time abroad to understand the conditions where his clients or their employees may have come from and the challenges they face when they come to the United States. He is one of the few attorneys in the Virginia Beach area that is fluent in Spanish.

Read more alumni profiles >