The Java® Language Specification, Java SE 7 Edition, Fourth Edition

14.3. Local Class Declarations

A local class is a nested class (§8) that is not a member of any class and that has a name (§6.2, §6.7).

All local classes are inner classes (§8.1.3).

Every local class declaration statement is immediately contained by a block (§14.2). Local class declaration statements may be intermixed freely with other kinds of statements in the block.

It is a compile-time error if a local class declaration contains any of the access modifiers public, protected, or private (§6.6), or the modifier static (§8.1.1).

The scope and shadowing of a local class declaration is specified in §6.3 and §6.4.

Example 14.3-1. Local Class Declarations

Here is an example that illustrates several aspects of the rules given above:

class Global ...