Seems like I spoke too soon. Removed the DTB option and started down the road of building up our board as a test and connect gdb to the target with the --gdb option.
address@hidden:~/project/test$ gdb qemu-build/arm-softmmu/qemu-system-arm /tmp/cores/core.qemu-system-arm.3253.jim-VirtualBox.1481140001
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Reading symbols from qemu-build/arm-softmmu/qemu-system-arm...done.
[New LWP 3256]
[New LWP 3254]
[New LWP 3253]
[Thread debugging using libthread_db enabled]
Using host libthread_db library "/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libthread_db.so.1".
Core was generated by `qemu-system-arm -M Boardx24 -m 256 -cpu cortex-m4 -no-reboot -nographic -S -singl'.
Program terminated with signal SIGSEGV, Segmentation fault.
#0 gic_test_pending (cm=<optimized out>, irq=<optimized out>, s=<optimized out>)
at /home/jim/project/test/qemu/hw/intc/gic_internal.h:90
90 if (s->revision == REV_NVIC || s->revision == REV_11MPCORE) {
[Current thread is 1 (Thread 0x7f9c1758f700 (LWP 3256))]
(gdb) bt
#0 gic_test_pending (cm=<optimized out>, irq=<optimized out>, s=<optimized out>)
at /home/jim/project/test/qemu/hw/intc/gic_internal.h:90
#1 gic_set_pending_private (s=0x0, cpu=0, irq=6)
at /home/jim/project/test/qemu/hw/intc/arm_gic.c:136
#2 0x000056402fabe233 in cpu_handle_exception (ret=<synthetic pointer>, cpu=0x56403223c720)
at /home/jim/project/test/qemu/cpu-exec.c:442
#3 cpu_exec (address@hidden) at /home/jim/project/test/qemu/cpu-exec.c:631
#4 0x000056402fae7b36 in tcg_cpu_exec (cpu=0x56403223c720)
at /home/jim/project/test/qemu/cpus.c:1117
#5 qemu_tcg_cpu_thread_fn (arg=<optimized out>) at /home/jim/project/test/qemu/cpus.c:1197
#6 0x00007f9c2185b6ba in start_thread (arg=0x7f9c1758f700) at pthread_create.c:333
#7 0x00007f9c2159182d in clone () at ../sysdeps/unix/sysv/linux/x86_64/clone.S:109
(gdb)