Bullitt & Chalkley.

The legal firm of Bullitt & Chalkley and its successor Chalkley & Camblos practiced corporate and land law in Big Stone Gap, Virginia, from the mid 1880s until the 1940s.

Joshua Fry Bullitt, Jr., was born in Louisville, Kentucky, on July 24, 1856. The several branches of the Bullitt family have produced generations of prominent lawyers, jurists, and public officials. In 1887, with many other budding capitalists from the Bluegrass region, he moved to Big Stone Gap, where he set up practice with a fellow Kentuckian, Henry Clay McDowell, and dabbled in coal and timber lands. In 1888 they formed the South Appalachian Land Company with their fathers' capital and purchased timber lands southeast of Big Stone Gap.

In 1894 Bullitt went into partnership with Joseph L. Kelly of Bristol, Virginia, a noted local attorney. When Kelly was appointed to the bench around 1905, Bullitt formed a new partnership with John W. Chalkley. Both firms made a specialty of corporate and land law, and found ready clients among the many coal companies being set up in the 1880s and 1890s. Bullitt became one of a handful of experts on the arcane subject of Appalachian land titles.

In 1890, when the coal boom was in full swing, he organized the Police Guard of Big Stone Gap. The Guard, which consisted of most of the young businessmen of the town, was formed to suppress the more raucous behavior of the mountaineers who periodically poured into town looking for excitement.

His fellow policeman, John Fox, Jr., wrote Bullitt into his THE TRAIL OF THE LONESOME PINE, where he appears as the "Captain of the Guard."

Bullitt began working for the Virginia Coal & Iron Company around 1891, and they eventually became his biggest client. Its president, Daniel B. Wentz, brought Bullitt to Philadelphia in 1918 and made him in-house counsel for the Wentz interests. The Virginia office was reorganized as J. W. Chalkley & Co. in 1922, and Bullitt's son-in-law, James L. Camblos, later became a junior partner under the style of Chalkley & Camblos. Bullitt died on April 20, 1932, and Chalkley on September 21 of the same year. Camblos continued to run the Virginia office, but outside work decreased in importance. Camblos gradually became in-house counsel for the Virginia Coal & Iron Company, the Stonega Coke & Coal Company, and their subsidiaries.