Attorney Bio

He has extensive experience in corporate (including formations and capital raising), securities and commodities regulatory work, employment (including FINRA cases) matters, EB-5 litigation and high-profile white-collar criminal matters.  Mr. Duffy has tried numerous Federal and state civil and criminal cases to verdict.   He has also handled hundreds of Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (“FINRA”) arbitrations and has tried approximately 120 such matters to decision.   Mr. Duffy has also handled dozens of personal injury and malpractice cases, and remittitur cases (one insurance sues another) on behalf of aggrieved individual and small insurance carriers.

At the beginning of his career Mr. Duffy served as an enforcement attorney and litigator for the United States Securities & Exchange Commission (“SEC”), Division of Enforcement, in New York City.  After working for the SEC Mr. Duffy served as a litigator and regulatory attorney with Merrill Lynch, Pierce Fenner & Smith, Inc. (now Bank of America), following which he became a manager at one of the company’s largest private client offices in New York City.    After nearly a decade at Merrill Lynch, Mr. Duffy became the General Counsel and Chief Compliance Officer for a large registered investment adviser which operated a “hedge” fund complex in Greenwich, Connecticut.   Mr. Duffy has continued to provide such services for both private equity and hedge fund complexes on an outsourced basis.

Mr. Duffy is one of the few attorneys in the United States to successfully represent clients before the United States Securities & Exchange Commission, in which they were given a Whistleblower award.   Mr. Duffy has also assisted clients with their efforts to report wrongdoing to other Federal and state agencies, including the U.S Internal Revenue Service.  

Mr. Duffy has also successfully secured the release of an individual sentenced for what was categorized by the local press as the largest fraud in the State of Connecticut, by pointing out that that individual had received no money or other personal gains as the result of his actions.

Prior to working for the SEC’ Division of Enforcement, Mr. Duffy clerked for the Honorable Stanley Sporkin of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia and for the Criminal Court of the City of New York.

Mr. Duffy obtained his Juris Doctorate degree from Fordham University School of Law in 1991 and is admitted to practice law in New York and Connecticut.