Charles graduated with honors in 1986 from Lehigh University, and received his J.D. in 1989 from Fordham University School of Law, where he was a member of Fordham Law Review. Charles then spent five years as a litigation associate at the prestigious Wall Street law firm Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft, where he developed his litigation skills working on numerous high profile cases, including the first hexavalent chromium exposure case ever taken to trial, and litigation arising out of the 1989 Exxon Arthur Kill oil spill.
In 1994, Charles and Lloyd Ambinder co-founded Virginia & Ambinder, LLP, as a firm dedicated to and advancing the rights of American's workforce. Charles litigates labor and employment cases, incluing numerous high profile class actions.
Charles also represents unions and multiemployer benefit plans in New York and New Jersey, and serves as local counsel to a number of international benefit funds. Charles advises multiemployer benefit plans on all plan matters, including compliance, plan design, administration and fiduciary issues. Charles conducts an ERISA collection practice for multiemployer plans that is second to none in efficiently and effectively pursuing recovery of delinquent employer and employee contributions.
Charles lectures on Taft-Hartley benefit plan collections for educational organizations and is the author of Upgrading Collection Practices, Employee Benefit Issues, The Multiemployer Perspective, 2002, Volume 44, International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans, and Communications Workers v. Beck: Supreme Court Throws Unions Out on Street, 57 Fordham Law Review 665.
Charles is a member of the New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania bars.