NYSBA Leadership
Officers
T. Andrew Brown, President
T. Andrew Brown of Rochester, founder and managing partner of Brown Hutchinson, LLP, and president of Ascend Wellness Holdings, became president of the New York State Bar Association on June 1, 2021. A NYSBA member for 37 years, he is a former chair of the Trial Lawyers Section and Finance Committee, vice-president for the 7th Judicial District,…
Read MoreT. Andrew Brown of Rochester, founder and managing partner of Brown Hutchinson, LLP, and president of Ascend Wellness Holdings, became president of the New York State Bar Association on June 1, 2021.
A NYSBA member for 37 years, he is a former chair of the Trial Lawyers Section and Finance Committee, vice-president for the 7th Judicial District, a member-at-large of the Executive Committee and co-chair of the Task Force on the Future of the Legal Profession and the Task Force on Racial Injustice and Police Reform, among various other leadership positions.
Brown formerly practiced as an associate with Nixon, Hargrave, Devans and Doyle (now Nixon Peabody) in the New York City and Rochester offices. He also served as Rochester’s corporation counsel – the City’s Chief Legal Officer and head of its law department. Brown’s civil litigation practice covers all phases of trial and appeals in matters of commercial disputes, personal injury and employment. His practice is statewide in state and federal courts. His clientele is nationwide. He has also been a mediator and arbitrator on the commercial, employment and complex case panels of the American Arbitration Association since 1996. He has received many awards for his business and civic achievements, and is rated at the highest level for attorneys, AV-Preeminent, for both legal ability and ethics by Martindale-Hubbell.
Brown is a past president of the Monroe County Bar Association and the Rochester Black Bar Association. He is a past general counsel of the National Bar Association. He recently completed nine years on the New York State Board of Regents, the last five as Vice-Chancellor. He has served on many other boards and commissions and has also held adjunct teaching positions with the State University of New York, and has lectured on many legal topics over the years.
Brown earned his law degree from the University of Michigan Law School, and his undergraduate degree from Syracuse University.
Read Less
Sherry Levin Wallach
President-Elect
Taa R. Grays
Secretary
Domenick Napoletano
Treasurer
Scott M. Karson
Immediate Past President
NYSBA Officers include the President, President-Elect, Secretary, and Treasurer. The President-Elect automatically becomes President the year following election.
The control and administration of the NYSBA is vested in the House of Delegates, the decision and policy-making body of the Association. The House meets four times a year (January, April, June and November). Action taken by the House of Delegates on specific issues becomes official NYSBA policy.
NYSBA Bylaws
The Bylaws are the governing rules of the New York State Bar Association and regulate the structure of the organization, the roles of officers, membership provisions, and the workings of NYSBA sections, committees, and the House of Delegates.
Totaling thirty members, the Executive Committee has the authority to act and speak on behalf of the Association, consistent with previous action of the House of Delegates, when the House is not in session. The Executive Committee meets quarterly before meetings of the House of Delegates and at other times as necessary.
The Executive Committee is composed of the officers of the Association, together with vice-presidents from each of the thirteen judicial districts in the state (the 1st district has two vice-presidents), eight members-at-large, and the immediate past president. All officers are elected to serve one-year terms.
All members of the Executive Committee also serve in the House of Delegates.
Section Chairs represent each of NYSBA’s 27 Sections. Each Section draws its membership from lawyers or judges with common professional interests. Sections operate with their own officers, dues schedule and committees. They address professional development, improvement of laws and continuing education in a variety of substantive law fields.
Sherry Levin Wallach
Sherry Levin Wallach is the deputy executive director of the Legal Aid Society of Westchester County.
A former chair of the Criminal Justice and Young Lawyers Sections, Levin Wallach served as NYSBA secretary for four terms, was a vice president from the Ninth Judicial District to the Executive Committee, chaired the Membership Committee and co-chaired the Task Force on Incarceration Release Planning and Programs. Levin Wallach serves on the Committee on Professional Discipline, the Committee on Mandated Representation, the Committee on Immigration Representation, and is a former chair of the Resolutions Committee. She is also a member of the Women in the Law Section, the Criminal Justice Section, the Trial Lawyers Section, the LGBTQ People and the Law Section and the Torts, Insurance, and Compensation Law Section. She is a Former Co-Chair of the Task Force on Incarceration Release Planning and Programs and a subcommittee chair for the Task Force on Parole Reform.
Levin Wallach is co-founder of the NYSBA Young Lawyers Section Trial Academy, an annual program offering five days of intensive trial training, where she is a team leader and lecturer. She has assisted NYSBA CLE on expanding the Trial Academy to have a series of virtual lectures on trial practice that run live from June to December. She chaired this year’s inaugural Virtual Trial Academy.
Levin Wallach organizes and lectures at continuing legal education programs for NYSBA, the New York State Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and the Westchester County Bar Association on the topics of criminal and civil trial practice, ethics and DWI. She has written a chapter on DWI defense, “Best Practices for Defense Attorneys in Today’s DWI Cases,” in Inside the Minds: Strategies for Defending DWI Cases in New York, as well as articles on criminal justice issues and trial practice.
Levin Wallach concentrates her practice on criminal defense. She has also practiced in the areas of estate planning, probate and estate administration, real estate and general civil litigation in the state and federal courts. She is admitted to practice in New York, the U.S. District Courts for New York’s Southern and Eastern districts and the U.S. Supreme Court. She served on both the Westchester and Putnam County 18B panels under their assigned counsel plans, which provide criminal defense for indigent people.
She is a former assistant district attorney of Bronx County. Levin Wallach was principal at her law firm Wallach & Rendo, LLP for approximately 14 years and of counsel to both Bashian Law (formerly Bashian & Farber), and Brown Hutchinson.
Levin Wallach earned her law degree from Hofstra University School of Law (now the Maurice A. Deane School of Law at Hofstra University) and her undergraduate degree from George Washington University.
Taa R. Grays
Taa Grays is vice president and associate general counsel of information governance, MetLife Legal Affairs. As the lead of information governance, Grays is responsible for the strategic management of MetLife’s global Information Lifecycle Management Program. She leads an eight-person team that develops, implements and manages the information governance strategic plan.
Grays is co-chair of the NYSBA Task Force on Racial Injustice & Police Reform. She is a member of the Business Law, Corporate Counsel and Women in Law Sections, as well as the Task Force on Autonomous Vehicles and the Law. She previously served as vice president of the First Judicial District on the Executive Committee. She previously chaired the New York State Conference of Bar Leaders and the Committee on Women in the Law (now the Women in Law Section). She received NYSBA’s Diversity Trailblazer Award in 2008.
Prior to this role, Grays served as the chief of staff to the general counsel since 2010. She started with MetLife in 2003 in the litigation section. Prior to MetLife, Grays was an assistant district attorney with the Bronx district attorney’s office in its rackets bureau for five-and-a-half years.
Grays has been recognized as one of 100 Leading Women Lawyers in New York by Crain’s New York Business in 2017, a Visionary Leader in Litigation by Inside Counsel in 2016, among the Most Influential Black Lawyers in 2015, and R3 – 100: Ready to Rise to become a general counsel in 2013 and 2015.
Within the legal community, the New York City Bar Association recognized her as a Diversity Champion in 2015. The Metropolitan Black Bar Association recognized her dedication and leadership to the bar in 2010 by honoring her with its inaugural Bar Leaders of the Year Award.
Grays earned her law degree from Georgetown University Law Center and received her undergraduate degree from Harvard College.
Domenick Napoletano
Domenick Napoletano is a solo practitioner focusing on complex commercial litigation and appellate work while maintaining a general practice. A number of his cases have appeared in published decisions, most involving real property and tenancy and occupancy issues. He has also spearheaded various state and federal class action lawsuits, including one against the New York City Department of Finance for its imposition of “vault taxes.”
Among his NYSBA activities, Napoletano is the immediate past chair of the General Practice Section and co-chair of NYSBA’s Emergency Task Force for Solo and Small Firm Practitioners as well as the Committee on Civil Practice Law and Rules. He is a member of NYSBA’s Restarting the Economy Work Group and the COVID-19 Recovery Task Force working group on landlord-tenant disputes. He has served on many NYSBA committees, including Finance, Leadership Development, Bar Leaders of New York State, Animals in the Law, the President’s Committee on Access to Justice, the Task Force on the Evaluation of Candidates for Election to Judicial Office and the Task Force on Mass Shootings and Assault Weapons.
Napoletano also served on NYSBA’s Executive Committee as vice president from the Second Judicial District, and the House of Delegates representing the Brooklyn Bar Association. He is a past president of the Brooklyn Bar Association, the Columbian Lawyers Association of Brooklyn, the Confederation of Columbian Lawyers of the State of New York and the Catholic Lawyers Guild of Kings County.
While in college and throughout law school, Napoletano worked for then-New York State Assemblyman Michael L. Pesce, who recently retired as presiding justice of the state Supreme Court Appellate Term for the 2nd, 11th and 13th Judicial Districts. Napoletano earned his law degree from Hofstra University School of Law and his undergraduate degree from Brooklyn.
Scott M. Karson
Scott M. Karson of Stony Brook was the 123rd President of the New York State Bar Association.
A partner at Lamb & Barnosky in Melville, he is a commercial and municipal litigator with a concentration in appellate work and chairs his firm’s professional ethics and litigation committees. Karson previously served for three years as treasurer of NYSBA and has also served on the Executive Committee as vice president for the Tenth Judicial District. He is former chair and a member of the Committee on Courts of Appellate Jurisdiction, former chair of the Audit Committee and serves on the Finance Committee, President’s Committee on Access to Justice and the Committee to Review Judicial Nominations. He is the former president of the Suffolk County Bar Association.
As president, he will be a NYSBA delegate to the ABA. He still serves on the ABA’s Council of Appellate Lawyers. Karson is vice chair of the board of directors of Nassau Suffolk Law Services, the principal provider of civil legal services to Long Island’s indigent population. He has twice received the Suffolk County Bar Association President’s Award, in 1996 and 2011, and received its Lifetime Achievement Award in 2018.
Before joining Lamb & Barnosky in 1987, Karson served as an assistant district attorney in Suffolk County and as principal law clerk to the late Associate Justice Lawrence J. Bracken of the Appellate Division, Second Department.
Karson earned his law degree from the Syracuse University College of Law, cum laude, and his undergraduate degree from the State University of New York at Stony Brook.