
Attorney David Pugh, a partner with the Birmingham-based Bradley law firm, has spent more time building court cases than physical places during his 36-year legal career. That is why his recent election as the 2025 national chair of the Associated Builders and Contractors (ABC) national board of directors might surprise some.
But as with most structures, there is more to Pugh’s career than what is easily evident from the facade of a business title. Look beyond the walls and you will find an engineering and construction foundation to his early life.
Pugh’s grandfather spent 48 years at Stockham Valves and Fittings, and another dozen as a consultant in the foundry industry. Pugh’s father earned engineering degrees from both Auburn University and the University of Alabama, then worked in a large fabrication shop for Chicago Bridge & Iron. And Pugh himself spent nearly every summer while in high school and college working some sort of construction-related job, including for Georgia Power during the creation of the Vogtle nuclear power plant near Augusta, Georgia.
“I had an early exposure to construction, and some of it was very heavy, industrial construction,” Pugh says. “I also spent a couple of summers working for a large commercial property manager on their maintenance team. So, I glazed windows, hung doors, changed filters. Basically, just about anything you could do without calling in a sub-contractor specialist.”
In addition to all that, Pugh’s area of focus throughout his decades at Bradley has been — what else — construction. As part of the firm’s Construction Practice Group, Pugh has represented owners, general contractors, subcontractors, engineers, architects, insurers and sureties throughout the United States. He has drafted and negotiated contracts for several large-scale construction projects, and has participated in numerous construction-related trials, hearings, mediations and arbitrations, including arguing a case before the U.S. Supreme Court.
“Because I’m a lawyer and not a contractor, there was a fairly lively debate when my elevation to the ABC executive committee was first being discussed,” says Pugh, who has served on the ABC Alabama chapter since 2007. “But I know construction, I know the issues that are important to ABC. And as I met more and more people within ABC, they began to realize, ‘Yes, he’s a lawyer, but this guy knows how construction works.’ That opened some minds.”
While Pugh is not necessarily surprised to be this involved with ABC, the path he took to get there was not the original plan. Pugh says he received a civil engineering degree from the University of Alabama “with the intention of becoming a general contractor and one day owning my own construction company.” Pugh decided that obtaining both an MBA and a law degree would help support that effort, so he enrolled in a dual-degree program at Vanderbilt University.
Upon graduating from Vanderbilt, however, the realities of a new marriage and maxed-out credit cards compelled Pugh to seek some immediate stable employment before trying to start his own business. He accepted an offer from Bradley in order to return to his hometown of Birmingham, and this short-term career bridge turned into a long-term position with the firm.

“I had the practical experience as a builder. So, I thought if I also had some expertise in law and the business aspects, that would help equip me to succeed as a contractor,” Pugh says. “But once I got here (to Bradley), I never made the change. I realized I liked the challenges of providing legal advice to contractors.
“I’m a contractor at heart, but one who happens to have the legal knowledge. I like helping contractors find solutions to business and legal problems. I’ve had the professional pleasure of representing just about every entity involved in construction projects, which is fun to me.”
It certainly helped that Pugh joined a firm that has maintained a focus on construction law since the 1960s, when Bradley began representing Blount Brothers Construction in Montgomery. At the time, Pugh says, there were not many firms in the nation that considered construction to be a primary field of practice.
“You’d have a general business or litigation lawyer who might develop some knowledge about construction over the years, but it wasn’t a recognized specialty,” Pugh says. “People didn’t say, ‘I’m a construction lawyer.’ But our law firm was one of the early pioneers to recognize that construction law was a growing area of expertise.”
Pugh notes that specializing in construction law is particularly relevant in Alabama because there are so many large construction companies in the state. Bradley has represented many of them, including BL Harbert, Brasfield & Gorrie, Caddell, Hoar, Rast and Robins & Morton.
“Alabama has a disproportionate amount of large, successful contractors compared to our population, and then there are all the subcontractors,” Pugh says. “We are a net exporter of construction services. It’s a very important sector of our state’s economy.
“There are a number of legal issues that these construction companies face. How to resolve disputes. Environmental issues. Labor issues. Business succession planning, because most construction companies are still privately held, usually by families. So, there is a recurring group of issues where a lawyer needs to have more than just conversational construction knowledge.”
Pugh’s year-long term as ABC chair coincides with the 75th anniversary of the organization’s founding in 1950, and he says celebrating that milestone will be part of his focus. But he also is extremely interested in helping the industry deal with issues involving workforce development.
“We have an acute workforce shortage in construction, and it’s going to be exacerbated as the Boomers continue to retire,” Pugh says. “ABC is working on as many programs as possible to attract traditionally under-represented groups to construction and to train them.
“In Alabama, for example, we have the Academy of Craft Training. It’s a program where we train high school juniors and seniors in five craft specialties, and they receive high school and college credit toward graduation. It’s been fabulously successful. We have a waiting list for the slots. We started in Birmingham and have added shops in Mobile and Decatur. The placement rate from the program into fulltime construction employment is around 90%. It’s one of the best ways to help solve the workforce shortage.”
It also is an example of how professions beyond contractors — from teachers to accountants to, yes, lawyers — are proving to be important to the overall success of the construction industry. Which is one of the reasons that Pugh’s selection as national chair shouldn’t be surprising.
“There is a whole host of services whose participants will never drive a nail, turn a screw or pour a yard of concrete,” Pugh says. “But they are essential to the successful delivery of construction services, and the ABC does a tremendous job of supporting all those aspects of the process.”
Cary Estes and Art Meripol are Birmingham-based freelance contributors to Business Alabama.
This article appears in the February 2025 issue of Business Alabama.