Grant Lally is the managing partner of Lally & Misir, LLP. A top ranked attorney, Mr. Lally is an experienced practioner with an extensive background in commercial and corporate transactions, federal and state litigation, administrative proceedings, and appellate practice. He has practiced law for over twenty years in the New York metropolitan area, and is also a Solicitor in the Republic of Ireland and the United Kingdom. Mr. Lally is an expert in legal and media crisis management and has handled many high profile matters, including those involving international jurisdictional conflicts. He has counseled and represented Heads of State, Government Ministers, CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, and appears regularly on radio and television.Mr. Lally’s past practice has included successfully representing President George W. Bush before the Miami-Dade and Orange County Boards of Election at the 2000 Florida Recounts; handling numerous complex corporate reorganizations involving multi-jurisdictional assets; recovering priceless stolen art from an international auction house; restructuring of clients’ business affairs to reduce their tax and liability exposure; successfully litigating major elections cases and appeals; representing media groups in domestic and international litigation; handling complex domestic relations, divorce, and custody matters; serving as general counsel to numerous corporations in the health care, media, manufacturing, and hospitality industries; and representing parties in multi-national litigation.

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Mr. Lally graduated with his B.A. with honors from The Johns Hopkins University; his J.D. from Boston University, School of Law; and an LL.M. in International & Comparative Law from Georgetown University, Law Center.

At Lally & Misir, LLP, Mr. Lally specializes in handling complex civil litigation and transactions, including business transactional work, corporate and business litigation, international arbitration and litigation, multi-jurisdictional conflicts including business and divorce proceedings, and the media managment of these conflicts and transactions.

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Mr. Lally was Founding Chairman of the Federalist Society for Law & Public Policy Studies, Long Island chapter, and served as Founding Chairman of the New York State Republican Lawyers Association. He served on the National Board of Governors of the Republican National Lawyers Association (1990-2008), and on the Board of the Bay of Pigs Brigade 2506 Museum in Miami (2004-2006). He currently serves as National Co-Chairman of The Irish American Republicans, and serves on the Boards of the Emerald Isle Immigration Center, the Plattduetsche Home Society, the Institute for US-Cuba Relations, and the Brehon Law Society of Nassau County. He is a member of the Irish American Bar Association of New York, and the Nassau and Suffolk County Bar Associations.

Deborah Misir is a partner of the firm.  She specializes in complex civil and white collar trial and appellate litigation before federal, state and administrative courts. In addition, she provides advice on regulatory compliance, and public policy issues. In addition to her practice with the firm, Ms. Misir is a professor at Touro Law School, where she has taught constitutional and administrative law, and directs the Veterans Clinic.

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Ms. Misir’s clients have included employers, unions, trade associations, local governments, and companies in the finance, hospitality, technology and energy sectors. She has also represented many individuals, including other lawyers, in white collar criminal, ethics and employment matters. 

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A leading federal litigator and expert on constitutional and government regulatory law, Ms. Misir has over twenty years of experience in both government and private practice, including briefing over seventy federal Circuit Courts of Appeals cases up to and including writs of certiorari and amicus briefs before the U.S. Supreme Court, making numerous federal appellate oral arguments, and serving as lead counsel on many federal civil and criminal district court matters.  She has won several cases with published decisions in the federal courts.

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Before entering private practice, Ms. Misir served in the Administration of President George W. Bush as U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Policy at the U.S. Department of Labor, ethics attorney at the White House Counsel’s Office, and Chief of Staff of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Ms. Misir started her career at the U.S. Department of Justice, serving in the Executive Office for Immigration Review, headquarters of the former U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), and the Civil Division. At the Justice Department, among other things, she was specially assigned as counsel to the U.S. Foreign Terrorist Tracking Task Force, the counter-terrorism and intelligence task force created in the immediate wake of 9/11 to prevent future attacks, and as counsel to the U.S. delegation to the United Nation’s International Maritime Organization (IMO).

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Ms. Misir graduated with a B.A. with honors in political science from the University of Chicago, and an M.A. from the University of Chicago’s Masters of Arts Program in the Social Sciences. She earned her law degree from the University of Minnesota Law School.  After law school, Ms. Misir served honorably in the U.S. Marine Corps until an injury cut short her service.

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Ms. Misir is President of the Indian American Bar Association of Long Island and Queens. She serves on the National Alumni Board of the University of Chicago’s Master of Arts Program in the Social Sciences (MAPSS), and previously served on the National Board of Governors of the Republican National Lawyers Association.  She is a member of the American Bar Association, the Federal Bar Council, and the Nassau County Bar Association.

Dr. John Vafai is Senior Of Counsel to Lally & Misir, LLP. An expert in international law, Dr. Vafai is recognized as a leading practitioner in the areas of international business law, business immigration, foreign direct investment and licensing, and natural resources and energy law. He has advised national governments and multi-national oil companies at the highest levels, previously serving as Deputy Minister of Social and Economic Development of Iran, Counsel to the Governor of Nizhny Novgorod Province, Russia, and the Director of Legal Affairs and OPEC Negotiations for the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC). He regularly appears on the BBC and other global media to provide expert opinion on international investment and migration issues.

Dr. Vafai has had a distinguished career in private practice, government practice and academia. His past private practice includes serving as lead legal counsel to numerous energy and natural resources companies, founding the Baku offices of Baker Botts, and establishing his own highly-successful energy law consultancy in Azerbaizan. He has advised senior government officials in Iran, Russia, Azerbaijan, and the United States.

Dr Vafai is also a highly regarded legal scholar. He was a Public Policy Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, DC, a Visiting Legal Scholar at Columbia University School of Law, editor of the Harvard Environmental Law Review, and winner of Yale University’s Ford Foundation James Raymond Goodrich Prize for legal scholarship. Dr. Vafai has taught law and international business management for over four decades at universities around the globe, including Rutgers University Graduate School of Management, the Western Kentucky University Department of Business Administration, the Caucasus University Graduate Schools of Business and Law in Tibilisi, Republic of Georgia and the University of Teheran Law School in Iran. He served as Director of the Pacific Asian Legal Studies Program and Visiting Professor of Law at the University of Hawaii School of Law. He is the author of the textbook INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS (1986) and of the first English language translation of the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran in CONSTITUTIONS OF THE WORLD (1981).

Dr. Vafai earned his Doctorate in Juridicial Science (J.S.D.) and Master of Laws (LL.M.), with Honors, from Yale University; his Masters in Public Administration (M.P.A.) from Harvard University; and his Juris Doctorate (JD) from the University of Tehran, School of Law.

At Lally & Misir, LLP, his practice focuses on international business transactions and business immigration. His clients include major multi-national oil companies, property managment and development firms, transportation and shipping firms, and construction firms. He also works with individuals who are relocating to the United States for business purposes.

Dr. Vafai serves on the National Board of Directors of the Karabakh Foundation, and is a member of the American Bar Association, the American Immigration Lawyers Association, the New York State Bar Association and the Academy of International Business. He is fluent in Farsi and Azerbaijani, and also speaks Russian, Turkish and Arabic.