Irish America magazine - Oct/Nov '08 issue: The Legacy of the San Patricios Lives On , Stars of the South, The Legal 100, Roots: The Mighty Mahers, All Hail The Humble Spud! , Music: Still Fiddlin’ Away , The Real Bill , The Battle over Ulysses, Broadway's Irish Colleen

Irish America is proud to present its inaugural Legal 100 feature. The following list is comprised of lawyers from all around the country who share a passion for the law and pride in their heritage.

A-De | Do-Ho | Hy-N | O-W

Donal O’Brien is a partner at the Chicago law firm of Bryan Cave LLP, where he focuses his practice on corporate law including mergers and acquisitions, commercial finance and general securities. He represented American Tower in its $800 million acquisition of ALLTELL cell phone towers, and other recent clients include Barrilla Foods, Irish Dairy Board and United Shockwave. In the area of finance, O’Brien has advised financial institutions in numerous secured and unsecured lending transactions. He also represents foreign investments to and from Ireland.

O’Brien graduated from University College Dublin with honors in history and received his law degree from Chicago's Loyola University, where he has taught a course in Documenting and Negotiating Finance Transactions. He is a member of the Chicago Bar Association’s Judicial Evaluation Committee, a director of the Illinois Chapter of the American Liver Foundation and the founder, director and president of the Ireland Network, North America’s largest Irish professional network in North America. He emigrated from Dublin in the 1990s.

Mary Ellen O’Connell is the Robert and Marion Short Chair in Law at the Notre Dame Law School, where she teaches international law courses. She began her teaching career at the Indiana University Law School, following a career in private practice in Washington, D.C. She has also taught at Ohio State University and for the U.S. Department of Defense at the Center for Security Studies in Germany. She was appointed by the International Law Association in 2005 to chair a four-year study on the meaning of war in international law.

O’Connell received her bachelor’s degree from Northwestern University. She holds a J.D. from Columbia Law School, an MSc in International Relations from the London School of Economics and an LL.B. from Cambridge University.

She is a third-generation Irish-American; her father’s family hails from County Kerry. She has written seven books and about 70 articles, some appearing in major publications such as The Wall Street Journal and USA Today. O’Connell is married.

Brian O’Dwyer is a senior partner in the New York litigation firm of O’Dwyer and Bernstien and has been cited as winning the highest personal injury award – $61 million – in the United States. He has served as Counsel to the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, the New York District Council of Carpenters and other unions. He is a regular commentator on legal issues for Fox TV and CNBC. His efforts on behalf of Puerto Rico brought him the honor of serving as Grand Marshal of the Puerto Rican Day Parade in 1993.

A recipient of the New York City Council Spirit of New York award for his work to bring together New York’s many cultures, O’Dwyer received papal honors in 2000 when he was named a Knight of the Holy Sepulchre. O’Dwyer received his undergraduate degree from George Washington University, his masters in Spanish in Madrid and his Juris Doctor law degree from Georgetown University. He returned to George Washington to receive his Masters in Law.

He is the son of County Mayo native Paul O'Dwyer, a famed lawyer and politician who co-founded the firm of O’Dwyer and Bernstien.

Michael O’Leary is a partner in the Houston law firm Andrews Kurth LLP. His practice is involved in all aspects of corporate transactions, including representation of public and private companies and investment banking firms. O’Leary also counsels on a wide range of strategic transactional matters, including international joint ventures and alliances, publicly traded limited partnerships, spin-offs, mergers, acquisitions and dispositions (by tender offer, exchange offer and otherwise) of corporations, divisions of corporations and other entities. He has particular experience with energy and oilfield service companies, pipeline transportation, staff leasings, royalty trusts, and forest products companies.

O’Leary graduated with a B.S. in Finance from the University of Alabama and earned an honors J.D. from the University of Houston Law Center. He has been published in Financier Worldwide and is a member of the Houston Bar Association and the State Bar of Texas. In 2006 he was included as one of Chambers USA Leading Business Lawyers and featured in Texas Monthly as a Texas Super Lawyer in Securities and Corporate Finance from 2003-2007. Married with three children, he has roots in County Cork.

James A. O’Malley is a native of Limerick City and a graduate of the National University of Ireland, Galway and New York Law School. He is the senior partner in the law firm of O’Malley & Associates, a boutique law firm in New York City which handles all aspects of U.S. Immigration law. The firm’s areas of specialization include executive and managerial transferee visas, investment visas, permanent residence and United States citizenship. He is also the co-editor of Everything Irish, a comprehensive one volume popular reference book on Ireland published by Ballantine Books in the U.S. in 2003, and by Mercier Press in Ireland in 2005. O’Malley is pictured above with members of the U.S. Munster Rugby Supporters Club of which he is a co-founder and the current president.

John O’Malley is a shareholder in the law firm of Volpe and Koenig P.C. in Philadelphia where his practice is focused on litigation and trademark matters. He is a member of the bar in Pennsylvania and was admitted to the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, and the Supreme Court of the United States.

O’Malley graduated cum laude from George Washington University and received his law degree from Villanova University.

He is first-generation Irish-American whose mother’s family hails from Termon, County Donegal and his father’s from Louisburgh, County Mayo. He has been vice president of the Brehon Law Society since 2006. He is also a board member of the Irish American Business Chamber Network and a member of the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick. He has served as a board member of Family and Community Services of Delaware County since 2001.

O’Malley is married with two children.

A strong advocate for legal justice for children, Patricia O’Neill has practiced law for over fifteen years in Pennsylvania and Delaware, and has represented numerous cases involving children with disabilities under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. After graduating from Chestnut Hill College, Patricia taught for ten years before working as a visiting nurse for nine years. She attended Widener School of Law in Wilmington, where she graduated cum laude.

Patricia’s grandmother, who emigrated from Ireland at the age of three, spent the next ninety years of her life in America fostering a strong sense of Irish appreciation in the lives of her children. A second-generation Irish-American, Patricia says that “being Irish manifests itself through my efforts to fight for justice. Not only do I firmly believe that Ireland stood and cried for justice, but I learned it from my very Irish dad.” O’Neill lives in Delaware with her husband and four daughters.

John Phelan has been practicing law in New York and Connecticut for the last 15 years. A trial attorney by trade, he has tried cases in all of the Supreme Courts in New York.

Phelan has been living his dream of having his own practice and giving back to the Irish community since 2001 when he opened his office on McLean Avenue in Yonkers. The practice is primarily devoted to real estate, particularly first time buyers. “Each time we help an Irish or Irish-American couple close on their first house in the Bronx or in Yonkers or anywhere in New York City, we take pride in helping their dream come true,” says Phelan.

Both of Phelan’s parents emigrated from Waterford in the early 1950s and he grew up surrounded by Irish culture. At age five, he started playing Gaelic football and eventually traveled to Ireland to play in the Minor Championship. Phelan played football for 30 years and now his three children, Sean, Claire and Leah, have embraced the sport.

Pulitzer Prize-winner Samantha Power was the founding executive director of the Care Center for Human Rights Policy at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University where she is now a professor.

Straight out of college, Power spent three years covering the war in Bosnia as a reporter and remains a working journalist, with her work appearing in various publications including The Atlantic Monthly and The New Yorker. She won the Pulitzer in 2003 for general nonfiction for her book A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide, and spent a year working in the office of presidential hopeful Senator Barack Obama. Power is a graduate of Yale University and Harvard Law School.

She was born in Dublin and moved to the United States when she was nine. She married Cass Sunstein on July 4 of this year.

William Quinlan is a managing partner at the Chicago law firm Quinlan and Carroll. His practice is primarily focused on business law. Quinlan previously served as a Justice of the Illinois Appellate Court and is a former Circuit Court Judge in Cook County.

Quinlan, who received the Distinguished Award for Excellence from the Illinois Bar Foundation and was inducted as a laureate by the Illinois State Bar Association Academy of Illinois Lawyers, graduated from Loyola University and received his J.D. from Loyola and his LLM from the University of Virginia. He is married with six children. A second-generation Irish-American, Quinlan’s father’s family hails from Cork and his mother’s from Galway. He is a member of the Irish Fellowship Club of Chicago, the Celtic Legal Society of Chicago and the Irish American Partnership for Excellence.

Jack Quinn is the co-founder and chairman of Quinn Gillespie & Associates, a strategic consulting company he formed in Washington, D.C. in January 2000 with Ed Gillespie.

Quinn served as counsel to President Clinton from November 1995 to February 1997. Prior to that, he was Vice President Gore’s Chief-of-Staff and Counselor. Before his government service, Quinn was an Adjunct Professor of Law at his alma mater, Georgetown University Law Center, where as a student he edited the Georgetown Law Journal. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and has served on a number of boards, including Fannie Mae, the Philadelphia Stock Exchange, the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial and the Center City Consortium.

Quinn’s great-grandfather came from County Clare.

Paul S. Quinn works for Buchanan Ingersoll and Rooney PC in Washington, D.C., where he specializes in federal government relations. Prior to joining Buchanan, Quinn provided policy and strategic advice to many senators, including Ted Kennedy, and served as a lieutenant in the United States Army from 1956-1958. He was the 2005 recipient of the Irish Peace and Culture Award from The American Ireland Fund, where he sits on the Board of Directors. He also founded the AIF’s annual gala fundraiser in Washington.

Quinn chairs the American Advisory Board of the Smurfit Graduate School of Business at University College Dublin. A Rhode Island native, he attended Providence College and received his law degree from Georgetown University.

All four of Quinn’s grandparents hailed from Ireland, and he enjoys dual citizenship. His paternal grandfather was from Coalisland in County Tyrone, and his maternal grandmother was from Belfast. On his mother’s side his grandfather was born in Waterford and his grandmother in Drumlish in County Longford. Quinn has been married to his wife, Denise, for 50 years. They have two children and two grandchildren.

Tom Reynolds III is a former Assistant Attorney General for the State of Illinois and a veteran of more than twenty jury trials. Along with another partner at the Chicago law firm Winston & Strawn, Reynolds holds the distinction of having secured the highest jury award ever collected in the Seventh Circuit of the United States.

Reynolds’ clients have included American Appraisal Associates, Baxter International, Carbon County Coal Company, FMC, Jefferson Smurfit Corporation, Gannet Co., Gould Inc., Multimedia Co., Northern Trust Company, Philip Morris, Salomon Brothers, United Airlines, VMS Realty and Wirtz Corporation. Reynolds is a member of the Boards of Directors of Georgetown University and Smurfit Stone Container Corporation, and is a recent past president of the Better Government Association in?Chicago. Reynolds is president of the Brain Research Foundation.

He received a B.S. in business administration from Georgetown University in 1974 and a J.D. from Emory University in 1977.

Reynolds is a third-generation Irish-American.

Robert J. Reilly is the Assistant Dean for the Feerick Center for Social Justice at Fordham University School of Law. After a career in corporate law at Transamerica Corporation, he returned to Fordham, where he had received both his undergraduate and law degrees. He has been involved in the administration of the school for over 25 years. For three seasons he served as the host of the cable television program Ask the Lawyer.

A former president of the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick in New York, Reilly was a contributing author to The Encyclopedia of the Irish in America, Reilly is also a member of the New York Irish History Roundtable and the American Irish Historical Society. He was involved in organizing the Fordham Law School Northern Ireland Mediation program. A fifth-generation Irish-American, he is married to the former Mary Jane Conlon and has three sons, John, Benedict and Michael.

Sean Patrick Riordan is an associate at Brecher Fishman Pasternack Heller Walsh & Tinker, a firm committed to personal injury lawsuits. After graduating with a B.A. in political science from Molloy College, Sean received his law degree in 2004 from St. John’s University School of Law.

Riordan converges his Irish roots with his legal career with memberships in the Nassau County Brehon Law Society and The American Ireland Fund Young Leaders group. Of how his Irish roots affect his current law practices, Riordan says, “Being Irish provides me with the knowledge of what injustice looks like, and the strength to help fight against it today.” He serves on the Board of Directors for the Feel Good Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to education and relief of health and financial burdens on the first responders to the 9/11 attacks.

He lives in New York with his wife, Elizabeth, and two young children who, Sean hopes, will value their Irish heritage “when they are old enough to appreciate anything other than Mickey Mouse!” A second-generation Irish-American, Sean has roots in counties Armagh, Roscommon, Cork and Mayo.

Fred Rooney is the director of the Community Legal Resource Network at City University of New York Law School, which supports a network of solo and small-firm attorneys in community-based practices in their efforts to increase access to civil justice in the New York City area. He is also a partner in the small Bethlehem, Pennsylvania-based law firm of Rooney and Mannicci LLC, and is committed to practicing pro bono law that focuses on international child abductions and lifesaving healthcare for children of needy parents.

A graduate of CUNY’s first law class in 1986, he received his master’s in bicultural and bilingual studies from Marywood College and his bachelor’s in Latin American Studies from Moravian College, both in Pennsylvania. He was awarded Moravian College’s Haupert Humanitarian Award in 2002. He remains a supporter of CUNY’s Joseph Doherty Fellowship, which provides financial assistance to CUNY law students who have demonstrated a commitment to civil rights or activism on behalf of Irish causes.

Rooney has two children and traces his roots to County Cork.

Kevin Ryan is the Criminal Justice Director for the City of San Francisco. ?He is also Deputy Chief of Staff to Mayor Gavin Newsom, and a senior advisor on criminal justice issues. Prior to joining the Mayors’ staff, ?Ryan was a partner in a major Ca. Law firm. Before that he was the 48th U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of California. Ryan’s four and a half years as Northern California’s top federal prosecutor will be remembered for his efforts to rid sports of performance-enhancement drugs. His handling of the BALCO steroids case permeated all levels of professional sports. Major league baseball has twice changed its testing policy for steroids and controlled substances since the case. Ryan attended Saint Ignatius High School before earning his Bachelor of Arts History from Dartmouth College and JD from the University of San Francisco School of Law. He was named one of the Top 100 California Lawyers of 2006 by the San Francisco Daily Journal, and voted a N. California "Superlawyer" for 2006 and 2007. Ryan’s father was born in Dublin and his mother in Longford. They immigrated first to Canada where Ryan was born, and then to San Francisco. He is married with two sons.

A career prosecutor, Bill Ryan serves as First Deputy Attorney General to Pennsylvania Attorney General Tom Corbett. In this role, Ryan supervises all administrative and legal issues within the Office of the Attorney General, and also serves as the primary advisor to Corbett on all major issues.

Prior to his appointment as First Deputy, Ryan served as Director of the Attorney General’s Criminal Law Division, overseeing investigations of all criminal matters including insurance fraud, environmental crimes, narcotics and Medicaid fraud.

Ryan earned his bachelor’s degree from St. Joseph’s University and J.D. degree from Villanova University School of Law. Upon graduation, he was hired as a legal intern with the Delaware County District Attorney’s Office, progressing to Trial Assistant, First Assistant District Attorney and later District Attorney.

Ryan is proud of his Irish heritage and traces his roots back four generations on his mother’s side and even further on his father’s. He lives with his wife, Debra, and their two sons in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania.

John G. Roberts, Jr., Chief Justice of the United States, was born in Buffalo, New York, on January 27, 1955. He received an A.B. from Harvard College in 1976 and a J.D. from Harvard Law School in 1979. Roberts began his career as a law clerk for Judge Henry J. Friendly of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit from 1979-1980, and as a law clerk for Justice William H. Rehnquist of the Supreme Court of the United States during the 1980 term.

Roberts went on to serve as a Special Assistant to the Attorney General of the United States. In 1982, he was appointed as Associate Counsel to President Reagan and served until 1986. From 1989-1993 he was the Principal Deputy Solicitor General, following which he practiced law in Washington, D.C. He served as a Judge on the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit from 2003-2005 until his nomination as Chief Justice of the United States by President George W. Bush. He assumed office on September 29, 2005.

Roberts is Irish through marriage. His wife, Jane Sullivan has roots in County Limerick where the couple maintain a home. They have two children, Josephine and John.

William Ward Shearouse,Jr., of the Savannah-based firm Weiner, Shearouse, Weitz, Greenberg and Shawe, specializes in the area of real estate transactions, general business and land development. He concurrently serves as the Assistant City Attorney for the City of Savannah, and has received the prestigious AV rating, the highest mark awarded by the Martinsdale Hubbell Law Directory. A member of the Hibernian Society of Savannah, Shearouse says, “Irishmen are inclined by nature to good fellowship and charity, and should not forget the duties they owe to themselves, their national character and their distressed countrymen.”

Shearouse earned his political science degree from the University of Georgia and his J.D. from the university’s Law School, where he was a member of the Prosecutorial Clinic. He is a second-generation Irish-American whose family hails from County Cork. He lives in Savannah with his wife, Ronda.

Roger Sullivan is a partner in the Los Angeles law firm of Sullivan, Workman and Dee, specializing in eminent domain and land use. He is the past chair of the eminent domain committees of the American, California and Los Angeles Bar Associations, and a fellow in the American College of Trial Lawyers. He is also a member of the American College of Real Estate Lawyers.

Sullivan served in the Navy as an aviator and a qualified carrier pilot until 1947. He began his law career in 1952, having obtained his law degree from Loyola Law School, where he helped found the St. Thomas More Law Society to encourage an emphasis on ethics and morality in legal education.

He has served as president of Loyola’s Board of Visitors and received their Distinguished Alumni Award in 1989.

Sullivan, whose father’s family hails from the Beare Peninsula in County Kerry, is married with six children. He is active in the Catholic Church and is a Knight in the Papal Order of Saint Gregory.

Francis “Frank” Sweeney, who started out as General Counsel at TDK Corporation, was named Corporation President and CEO of TDK USA in 2004. He is responsible for strategic plans of subsidiaries throughout the U.S. as well as domestic and international mergers.

After receiving his B.A. in English literature from Villanova University and his J.D. from Fordham University School of Law, Sweeney worked at Transamerica Interway, Inc., where he dealt with legalities in domestic and international leasing before serving as Senior Counsel at the Hertz Corporation.

A second-generation Irish-American who often quotes Oscar Wilde, Sweeney traces his roots to Counties Cavan, Mayo and Cork. He was awarded the Villanova University Distinguished Arts and Science Alumni Award in 2005, and believes that being Irish means “working hard and maximizing our God-given talents to advance each generation. Sometimes it is done with a joke or a laugh but that is just for fear of revealing the depth of the heart that cares so much.”

Sweeney lives in Connecticut with his wife of 32 years and their four children.

David C. Tierney is a partner in the Scottsdale, Arizona law firm Sacks Tierney P.A., where he acts as an arbitrator and mediator.

Named in Woodward/White, Inc.’s The Best Lawyers in America from 2003-04 through 2007-08, Tierney was also listed by Southwest Super Lawyers magazine as one of the top attorneys for 2007.

Tierney received his undergraduate degree in psychology from Brandeis University and his law degree from Harvard in 1965. He served in the Peace Corps in Venezuela in the 1960s and continues to be active in public service, for which he received an award in Maricopa County.

A third-generation Irish-American, Tierney founded the Phoenix chapter of the Irish American Cultural Institute and serves as its chairman. His father’s family hails from Limerick.

Married with two children, Sean and Connor, Tierney is a member of the Arizona Coalition for Tomorrow, which operates programs to benefit children in the state.

William Treanor is the Dean and Paul Fuller Chair of Law at Fordham Law School in New York City. He joined the faculty in 1991 and has taught a range of subjects including property law and criminal law. Prior to joining the Fordham faculty, Dean Treanor was a speechwriter for the United States Secretary of Education and served as Associate Independent Counsel in the Office of the Iran-Contra Independent Counsel. He successfully defended on appeal before the United States Court, the conviction of the only Iran-Contra figure to serve jail time.

Treanor is also a leading constitutional historian. He is active in Fordham’s summer program in affiliation with University College Dublin and Queen’s College in Belfast. His senior paper in college was on the Dublin Archdiocese and the Home Rule Movement. Dean Treanor attended Yale College for his undergraduate degree, received an A.M. in history from Harvard, where he began law school. He received his law degree from Yale Law School. Irish on both sides, with roots in County Donegal and Belfast. He and his wife, Allison, have two children, Liam and Katherine.

John F. Tully is a lawyer in the New York Office of Fulbright & Jaworski LLP, where he defends clients in commercial, environmental and property damage lawsuits. Tully graduated from St. Francis College in 1967 and named the new college board chairman on July 1. He received his J.D. from the University of Notre Dame Law School. He began his legal career working in the homicide bureau of the New York County District Attorney’s office. He went on to work for ExxonMobil, where he first served as staff counsel, focusing on environmental and employment law issues, and eventually rose to the position of Assistant General Counsel, where he was responsible for worldwide litigation.

Tully is second-generation Irish-American. After emigrating to the United States from County Galway, his grandmother worked as a maid in a house on Remsen Street in Brooklyn, current home to St. Francis College, where he earned his B.A. in history. His grandfather hailed from County Cavan, where Tully, his wife and two children visited this past summer, fulfilling his desire to show the children “exactly where their great-grandfather was born and raised.”

Neal C. Tully, partner at Masterman, Culbert and Tully LLP, is a member of the bar of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. He has also been admitted to the Federal District Court for Massachusetts, the First Circuit Court of Appeals, and the United States Supreme Court. A 1973 graduate of Boston College Law School, he has a general civil litigation and appellate practice with a concentration in eminent domain, land valuation and land use and development.

Tully has tried approximately sixty jury trials and an equal number of bench trials and arbitrations. He is the former chairman of the Eminent Domain Committee of the Boston Bar Association, and has lectured and written articles on eminent domain and land valuation. He was selected by Super Lawyers magazine in 2004, 2006 and 2007, and has been chosen by The American Lawyer as among the Best Lawyers in America for eminent domain and condemnation law for 2008.

Tully’s father’s side is from the Connemara area of County Galway and Cork, and his mother’s side is from Tuam, County Galway and from Donegal.

Mark Tuohey is a partner at the Washington, D.C. branch of the law firm of Vinson-Elkins, where he is a litigator and represents companies in civil and white-collar criminal litigation. He served as president of the District of Columbia Bar Association and is a fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers.

As chair of the D.C. Sports and Entertainment Commission, Tuohey brought major league baseball to Washington and was named Washingtonian of the Year in 2005. A former advisor to the Independent Commission on Policing for Northern Ireland, Tuohey has also served as a legal advisor to the office of Ireland’s Attorney General. He currently chairs Cooperation Ireland (U.S.), an organization involved in cross-border reconciliation efforts.

Tuohey, who received his bachelor’s degree from St. Bonaventure University and his law degree from Fordham University Law School, is an Irish citizen whose maternal grandparents hail from Tipperary and paternal grandfather from Galway. The grand marshal for this year’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade in Washington, he is married with three children.

New York native James Wade is a partner at the law firm of Robinson and Cole LLP in Hartford, Connecticut.

He has been consistently named in the directory of Best Lawyers in America in the categories of corporate and negligence litigation and white-collar criminal defense, and has been a Fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers since 1980.

Appointed by Connecticut’s governor to serve as an arbitrator on the state’s behalf in a dispute with the state of New York over Metro-North Railroad funding, Wade served as counsel to the Connecticut State Democratic Party for 20 years and as counsel to three of the state’s governors.

Wade received his undergraduate degree from Yale University in 1959 and went on to law school at the University of Virginia. He also served in the U.S. Navy.

Married with two children, Sarah and Michael, Wade is a third-generation Irish-American whose father’s family hails from Waterford. His mother’s family is from Dingle, County Kerry

Joseph A. Walsh is a partner and vice chairman of Winston & Straw’s corporate department. Since joining the firm in 1977, Walsh has practiced exclusively in the corporate area, concentrating in mergers, acquisitions, and divestitures, as well as joint ventures for public and privately held companies. He also practices in the area of securities law and has extensive experience in sports law and media law, handling the acquisitions of the San Francisco 49ers, Denver Nuggets, Chicago White Sox, and Montreal Canadians and numerous television stations and newspapers.

Walsh serves as a panel member of the American Association of Arbitrators and as a director for the Ireland Chamber of Commerce in the United States. He received his B.A., with honors, from Indiana University in 1971 and a J.D., magna cum laude, from Indiana University Law School in 1974.

Walsh is a second-generation Irish-American whose father’s family hails from Kerry and whose mother’s is from Dublin.