Lawyers who represented Hilton Hotel employees in a class-action lawsuit over their pension plan are entitled to $21.5 million in fees, a U.S. District Court judge ruled.

The employees last year won a $140 million class action lawsuit against Hilton Corp. and its retirement savings plan over allegations the company improperly credited service time in a process known as backloading. The Employee Retirement Income Security Act contains regulations to prevent abusive forms of backloading. The practice causes plan participants to accrue benefits slowly in their first years of employment.

Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, of the U.S. District Court for D.C., ruled last week that the employees’ attorneys, led by Stephen Bruce of Stephen R. Bruce Law Offices of Washington, D.C., were entitled to 15 percent of the judgment against Hilton. The judge also awarded the attorneys $603,000 in expenses. All of the money will be paid out of the fund established to pay as many as 23,000 eligible Hilton employees.