ATHENS, Ohio — Hillary Clinton typically ignores protesters who confront her on the campaign trail, but she fired back at one high-profile rabble-rouser who had stood outside her West Virginia event on Monday.

“I heard Mr. Blankenship was outside my event yesterday protesting me,” Mrs. Clinton said on Tuesday, referring to Donald L. Blankenship, the former chairman and chief executive of the Massey Energy Company. Mr. Blankenship, one of the wealthiest men in Appalachia, was for conspiring to violate federal mine safety standards after an explosion killed 29 men in 2010.

Mr. Blankenship, who is set begin his sentence within months, had stood in solidarity on Monday with the anti-Clinton protesters in Williamson, W.Va., many of whom appeared to be coal workers and held signs supporting the Republican front-runner, Donald J. Trump. They chanted “Go home, Hillary!” and “Bring back our jobs!” as the former of secretary of state walked into a health and wellness center in Williamson, in Mingo County, an area of West Virginia particularly hard hit by the downturn in coal jobs.

“If Donald Trump wants the support of someone like that, he can have it,” Mrs. Clinton, the Democratic front-runner, said at a rally here on Tuesday, pointing to legislation she supported that would put into effect additional workplace safety measures and attempt to hold executives accountable.

She said Mr. Blankenship “had neglected workers’ safety for years” before the , which killed “29 brave men” in the deadliest accident in American coal mining in four decades.

Earlier on Tuesday, Mrs. Clinton’s West Virginia state director, Talley Sergent, said Mr. Blankenship had demonstrated “blatant disregard for our miners and their safety.”

In a statement Tuesday, Mr. Blankenship said Mrs. Clinton “should understand that as a lifetime member of coal country and a proud West Virginian, I am interested in any suggestions she has to address the problems coal miners and coal communities face today.” But, he added, “it is disappointing that she is choosing to promote her political campaign by demonizing me.”

Mr. Blankenship, a Republican donor who rose from a working-class childhood in Appalachia to lead the nation’s sixth-largest coal company, continues to have deep ties in West Virginia, which holds its Democratic primary on May 10.

In April, a Federal District Court sentenced Mr. Blankenship for his connection to the Upper Big Branch explosion. He was not accused of directly causing the incident and has emerged as a lightning rod in a legal case that the news media called “.” Mr. Blankenship’s verdict was the first time such a high-ranking energy executive was convicted of involvement in a mining safety violation.

Mrs. Clinton endured a hostile greeting when she campaigned Monday in Mingo County, a center of white working-class voters drawn to Mr. Trump’s brand of populism.

Her two-day bus tour of Appalachia turned into an apology tour of sorts for comments she made in March to CNN that if elected, she would “put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business.” Republicans skewered Mrs. Clinton for the remark, made in the context of creating new clean energy jobs in depressed parts of the country, and she spent much of her time here explaining the remark and laying out her plan to help coal country.

“To put it plainly, I misspoke,” Mrs. Clinton said at the final event of her two-day Appalachia tour on Tuesday. “One reason I took this trip is to say it directly to the people it affected.”