Key Issues in Drug Cases in Virginia

Faculty

Russel A. Henderson, Deputy Commonwealth’s Attorney, Orange County Commonwealth Attorney’s Office / Orange

Todd M. Shockley, Assistant Attorney General / Richmond

Michael T. Trent, The Trent Law Practice, PLC / Halifax

About the Speakers

Russel A. Henderson, Deputy Commonwealth’s Attorney, Orange County Commonwealth Attorney’s Office / Orange

Russel Henderson graduated from the University of Virginia School of Law in 2012. He has prosecuted cases across the Commonwealth, as a third-year law student in Fluvanna and then in Orange, Halifax, and Henrico. He served as the drug prosecutor in Orange for several years, trying a variety of drug distributions and other cases related to the opioid epidemic. He moved to Henrico in 2020, where he joined the drug team and prosecuted large-scale distribution cases, including numerous multi-state trafficking operations. In January 2024, he accepted the deputy position in Orange County. He has prosecuted homicides, domestic and sexual violence, and virtually every other major category of crime, but for nine years his primary focus has been drug crime.

Mr. Henderson is a Major in the U.S. Army Reserves, where he serves as a Brigade Judge Advocate with a Military Police Brigade headquartered in Michigan. He has deployed five times in support of contingency operations, returning from 10 months in the Horn of Africa in September 2023.

Todd M. Shockley, Assistant Attorney General / Richmond

Todd Shockley prosecuted his first drug distribution case as a third-year law student intern with the Campbell County Commonwealth’s Attorney’s Office, where he successfully tried the case to a jury. Soon after that sortie, he graduated from Liberty University School of Law and began to cut his teeth—and occasionally his thumb—working with the Commonwealth’s Attorney’s Office in Halifax, where he prosecuted all species of crimes and honed the necessary skills to present drug distribution cases for the government. He worked with the Halifax team until 2017 when he joined the Fluvanna Commonwealth’s Attorney’s Office, where he served as an ACA focusing on cases involving child abuse, sexual assaults, domestic violence, and drug distribution. He is a former prosecutor and a former defense attorney. He was selected to serve as a Special Assistant United States Attorney in the Western District of Virginia.

After leaving the Fluvanna office, Mr. Shockley ventured into private practice to try his hand at criminal defense, family law, and sundry civil matters. His time as an ACA gave him a keen eye for spotting and raising constitutional and procedural issues while also maintaining amicable relations with the prosecution teams throughout the courts he served in central Virginia.

While he enjoyed the thrills of private practice, Mr. Shockley and his wife decided it was time to head home and relocated to Charlottesville where he took a position with the Virginia Attorney General’s Office in 2022. There he is tasked with litigating civil rights violations across the Commonwealth with a focus on enforcing fair housing laws and the newly enacted police misconduct statute.

Michael T. Trent, The Trent Law Practice, PLC / Halifax

Michael T. Trent has been practicing since 2011, with a primary focus on criminal defense and personal injury litigation. After graduating from Lynchburg College (now University of Lynchburg) in 2007, he received his juris doctorate from Suffolk University Law School in Boston, Massachusetts.  He then returned to Southside Virginia in 2011 to begin his career as a public defender in South Boston, Virginia, before starting the Trent Law Practice with his wife Blair at the beginning of 2015.