Alyssa S. Adams, Esq.
Alyssa Adams represents service members, veterans, and federal employees in matters affecting their careers, military records, and professional reputations. Her practice includes military discharge upgrades and records corrections, military administrative defense, and federal employee discipline and appeals. With more than 27 years of legal experience, she has served as an Army prosecutor, appellate advocate, and senior federal agency counsel. She is a Colonel in the U.S. Army Reserve and holds the Army’s Expert Military Justice Practitioner designation. She applies that experience to focused, evidence-based representation before adverse personnel decisions and records become final.
At the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, Alyssa served as Senior Associate General Counsel and handled all of the agency’s civil litigation. She advised on the full range of civilian labor and employment matters, from misconduct investigation through proposed discipline, adverse action, and appeal. She represented the agency before the MSPB, EEOC, FLRA, and U.S. District Court, wrote briefs and motions, and directed discovery. She also advised on FOIA, the Privacy Act, ethics, congressional inquiries, and administrative investigations.
She then spent seven years as an Attorney-Advisor in the Department of the Army’s Administrative Law Division, reviewing Army regulations for legal sufficiency against federal statutes, executive orders, and Defense Department requirements. Before joining Cacciatore Legal, she represented service members and veterans in discharge upgrade petitions, UCMJ-related matters, administrative boards, federal employment matters, and VA-related proceedings.
At Cacciatore Legal, her military administrative practice addresses adverse personnel actions and investigations, enlisted administrative separations, officer retention and separation matters, and discharge review and military records correction petitions. Alyssa’s perspective comes from nearly every seat in military justice and includes military prosecution, government appellate advocacy, and Army administrative law.
She prosecuted cases at Fort Bragg and Fort Lewis and argued for the government on appeal. In 2005, she deployed to Iraq for a year as the senior attorney for the 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division, advising the commander and staff daily. She met regularly with the Chief Judge of Diyala Province and inspected Iraqi Army and Iraqi Police detention facilities to support the rule of law. She later advised on the military commissions at Guantanamo Bay. Today, Alyssa is a Colonel in the U.S. Army Reserve, a role she has held since 2018. She has taught criminal and constitutional law at West Point and trial advocacy at The Judge Advocate General’s School. Her prosecution, appellate, and administrative law experience informs her work with service members responding to adverse personnel actions and veterans seeking military discharge upgrade or corrections to their military records.
Core Practice Areas:
Military Discharge Upgrades & Records Corrections: Petitions to Discharge Review Boards and Boards for Correction of Military/Naval Records (BCMR/BCNR), including discharge characterization, narrative reasons and separation codes, adverse evaluations, and other military personnel records.
Military Reprimands, Counseling & Adverse Records: Assistance with Army GOMOR rebuttals, letters of reprimand or admonishment, adverse counseling and unfavorable personnel entries (including Marine Corps 6105/Page 11 and Coast Guard Page 7 records), and post-filing correction or removal requests where permitted.
Military Administrative Separations & Officer Boards: Enlisted administrative separation boards (including ADSEP proceedings), officer Boards of Inquiry (BOIs), show-cause actions, and other service-specific officer separation proceedings, with written responses and hearing representation where appropriate.
Military Investigations & Selected Nonjudicial Punishment: Responses to command and administrative investigations (including Army AR 15-6, Navy/Marine Corps JAGMAN, and Air Force/Space Force commander-directed investigations) and selected NJP matters (Article 15, Captain’s Mast, or Office Hours), subject to case-specific review.
Employee Discipline & Adverse Actions: Investigations, proposed disciplines, suspensions, and removals.
Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB) Appeals: Defending career civil service rights.
Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO): Federal sector discrimination and retaliation claims before the EEOC.
Federal Labor Relations: Matters before the Federal Labor Relations Authority (FLRA).