§ 8.01-195.2.Definitions.

Section 8.01-195.2 supplies the vocabulary the rest of the Virginia Tort Claims Act relies on. “Agency” reaches broadly — any department, institution, authority, instrumentality, board, or other administrative arm of Virginia government, plus transportation districts created under the Transportation District Act of 1964 and a specific 1964 Acts of Assembly chapter. “Employee” is defined just as broadly: any officer, employee, or agent of an agency, or anyone acting on an agency’s behalf in an official capacity, whether the service is temporary or permanent and whether or not the person is paid.

The definitions also draw a firm line around what the Act does not cover. School boards, as defined elsewhere in the Code, are neither state agencies nor are their employees state employees for purposes of this article. That carve-out matters because it means a person injured by a school employee’s negligence cannot rely on this article’s waiver of immunity — that claim, if one exists, runs through whatever separate immunity rules apply to local school boards.

Finally, the definition of “transportation district” is deliberately narrow. It reaches only a transportation district that has entered an agreement — one to which the Northern Virginia Transportation District is a party — with a firm or corporation acting as its agent to provide passenger rail service, and only while that firm or corporation performs under the agreement. Most transportation districts fall outside this narrowed definition entirely.