James D. Zirin is a leading litigator, having served as an Assistant United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York in the Criminal Division under the legendary Robert M. Morgenthau. He has represented clients for over 40 years in some of the most notorious financial scandals of our time. His law practice has featured the defense of major accounting firms charged with violations of professional responsibility and of substantial class actions.

He is the author of two books, The Mother Court—Tales of Cases That Mattered in America's Greatest Trial Court, released in June 2014 by ABA Books, and Supremely Partisan--How Raw Politics Tips the Scales in the United States Supreme Court, released in September 2016 by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.

Jim is the host and producer of the critically acclaimed cable television talk show, "Conversations in the Digital Age," www.digitalage.org which can be seen weekly throughout the New York metropolitan area on CUNY-TV. Guests on the show have been a range of personalities from the worlds of politics, law, business, foreign relations, national security, counterterrorism, media, lifestyles and the military. His guests have included UN Secretary-General Ban ki-Moon, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly, Senator Olympia Snowe, Metropolitan Opera General Manager Peter Gelb, Council on Foreign Relations President Richard Haass, MOMA Director Glenn Lowry, Lincoln Center Theater Artistic Director André Bishop, Jazzman Wynton Marsalis, former HEW Secretary Joe Califano, financial journalist Jim Grant, Bear Stearns former CEO Ace Greenberg and a host of others.

Jim has written over 100 op-ed articles for Forbes, Barron's, the LA Times, the London Times, the Washington Times, the New York Sun, the Nation, the Daily Beast, and the New York Law Journal. In August 2003, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg appointed him to the New York City Commission to Combat Police Corruption.

He has been a Fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers, the past chair of its International Law Committee and a past chair of its Alternatives for Dispute Resolution Committee; a member of the International Academy of Trial Lawyers; the board of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs of Princeton University; the board of trustees of New York Law School; the executive committee of The Pilgrims of the United States; and the Board of Editors of the New York Law Journal. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

A graduate of Princeton University with honors, he received his law degree from the University of Michigan Law School where he was an editor of the Michigan Law Review and a member of the Order of the Coif. He is listed in "Who's Who in America."

He is married to Marlene Hess.