Rocky Brancato has spent more than 25 years at the center of Tampa Bay’s most serious and complex criminal cases. A veteran trial lawyer with an AV Preeminent® rating from Martindale-Hubbell for professional excellence and ethics, he built his career inside one of Florida’s largest public defender offices before founding The Brancato Law Firm, P.A. in 2025. Today, he leads a trial-focused practice representing clients in high-stakes felony matters including homicide, sex offenses and other cases where strategy, forensic analysis and seasoned judgment often determine the outcome.

Brancato’s perspective is rooted in a lifelong connection to service and discipline. He grew up in an Air Force family—his father a staff judge advocate, his mother a first-generation Italian immigrant—where preparation, resilience and accountability were daily expectations. Those early influences, combined with becoming a father later in life through adoption, shaped the patient, grounded approach he brings to clients facing the most difficult moments of their lives.

For more than two decades, Brancato served in the Hillsborough County Public Defender’s Office, ultimately becoming chief assistant public defender and chief operations officer. That position gave him an eagle-eye perspective, mentoring hundreds of attorneys and deepening his understanding of every facet of practice, from investigative strategy to courtroom execution. Even while managing at the executive level, he continued trying complex cases, keeping his leadership tied to real courtroom experience.

His work placed him in daily collaboration with DNA analysts, digital-forensics examiners, medical experts, psychologists and accident reconstruction specialists—exposure that shaped his defense style. Brancato is known for using technical evidence to dismantle assumptions, reframe investigations and build leverage long before trial. He is also among the relatively small group of Florida attorneys who are death penalty-qualified, giving him a rare command of mitigation, forensic strategy and case development.

Clients turn to him for his steady presence, meticulous preparation and ability to see narrative weaknesses others overlook. His firm intentionally maintains a low caseload to allow deep analysis, exhaustive review of discovery and the strategic use of experts when the stakes demand it. Brancato operates as a strategist who blends courtroom skill, institutional knowledge and a clear moral compass—an attorney who understands the systems, science and human realities that drive the most consequential criminal cases.