A fuel injection device having a pump piston which during the supply stroke pumps fuel from a pump work chamber into an injection line which leads to a fuel injection valve. Directly adjacent to the branching off of the injection line from the pump work chamber, at the diameter of the injection line, a valve seat is provided, at which the injection line then merges with a chamber into which a pressure valve closing member plunges. The valve closing member is tightly guided in a guide bore, loaded by a valve spring, and in the chamber has a pressure shoulder adjoining the sealing surface that cooperates with the valve seat. The rear side of the pressure valve closing member communicates with a continuously open relief line. Because of this construction, the pressure valve closing member operates as an equal-pressure valve and simultaneously as a deflecting piston as well, with the aid of which a pressure rise in the pump work chamber is built up in a retarded manner until such time as the pressure valve closing member comes to rest on a stop. A pressure rise of this type is particularly advantageous in connection with control of the injection phase by means of a magnetic valve subjected to the high pressure.