James F. Woods is Founder and Managing Partner of Woods Lonergan and a New York Commercial Division trial lawyer who resolves complex commercial and real estate disputes valued at $1M–$100M+ for business owners, principals, and middle-market enterprises across the New York metro area.
James appears regularly in the Commercial Division and in the federal district courts for the Southern and Eastern Districts of New York and has argued appeals in the Appellate Division and the Second Circuit. He has tried more than 60 jury cases to verdict as first-chair trial counsel, in commercial disputes and, earlier in his career, as a prosecutor. His experience spans trial and appellate litigation in state and federal court as well as arbitration and mediation, and it centers on high-stakes contract and business tort claims, including breach of fiduciary duty and fraud.
He has served as trial counsel to the privately held, founder-led, and established family-owned businesses that drive New York’s middle market, often against larger, well-resourced counterparties.
James built Woods Lonergan to be a trial-ready alternative to larger, institutional firms. When a highstakes matter has stalled, or when a dispute is time-sensitive, outcome-determinative, or heading toward trial, clients retain him to reset the strategy and provide a decisive path to resolution. As Managing Partner, he leads these matters personally, from first assessment through verdict, setting the strategy and staying closely involved in negotiation and trial. That alignment of senior judgment and efficient execution is how he runs every matter.
Clients rely on James for a results-oriented, pragmatic, and analytical approach to litigation, and for his presence in the courtroom. In strategizing with a client, James works to understand not only the objectives in the litigation itself, but how that litigation fits the client’s broader commercial goals.
Because every matter is prepared for trial from the outset, most resolve before it, whether at the pleading stage, through discovery, or at the summary judgment stage. Where assets are at risk of being moved beyond reach, he moves early for a prejudgment order of attachment or injunctive relief. That readiness is the strongest position from which to negotiate and settle.
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Beyond the courtroom, James resolves disputes through arbitration and mediation, and counsels companies and their boards before conflicts arise, positioning them to avoid litigation or to prevail in it. Clients who first retain James for a dispute often keep the firm on afterward as corporate counsel. He is frequently retained as late-stage trial counsel, by other firms or by clients mid-litigation, when a complex commercial matter is escalating and requires senior courtroom leadership. Regional and national firms also bring James in as New York co-counsel and local counsel, often when a larger firm faces a commercial conflict. In select matters, he works on a hybrid-contingency basis that aligns the firm’s interests with the client’s. James has also held leadership appointments in complex multi-district litigation.
Capabilities
Across industries and sectors, James focuses on high-stakes commercial disputes that decide the control, viability, and equity of a business or a real estate asset, matters in which the outcome is determinative and often worth far more than the amount in dispute.
Complex Commercial Litigation. When a contract collapses or a business relationship turns adversarial, James protects the client’s position: enforcing or defeating the agreement, building the evidentiary record, and moving early for injunctive relief, a temporary restraining order, or attachment where assets are at risk. He has tried these high-stakes cases to verdict before juries in long and complex commercial trials, and has defended those results on appeal. He litigates breach of contract, commercial fraud, tortious interference, unfair competition, trade secret misappropriation, and breach of warranty and indemnification, including disputes over supply, distribution, and services agreements, for mid-market and privately held manufacturing, retail, technology, and e-commerce enterprises. He serves on the Commercial & Business Litigation Committee and the Business Torts & Unfair Competition Committee of the American Bar Association Section of Litigation.
Partnership & Shareholder Disputes. When owners fall out, the control and value of the company or venture are in play. The dispute often begins with fraud or a breach of fiduciary duty between the owners themselves. James represents both majority and minority owners: securing books-and-records access, seeking removal of a member or manager, and pursuing attachment or injunctive relief where value is being moved out of reach. His matters include business divorce, minority oppression and freeze-outs, derivative actions, deadlock and judicial dissolution, forced buy-out, and fair value appraisal proceedings in closely held companies, family businesses, and real estate holding entities. James has litigated these disputes in the New York Commercial Division from every position: for the controlling owner and the minority, on both sides of a buy-out fight, and through trial where a negotiated exit was not available. Many arrive after a company is already deadlocked or an owner has been frozen out.
Real Estate & Asset Litigation. Developers, investors, lenders, landlords, and the families and family offices that hold significant New York real estate retain James when ownership, control, or the value of a property is contested. He resolves who holds the asset, what it is worth, how it is divided, and how its leases are enforced, across ownership, control, and portfolio disputes, joint-venture and partnership dissolution, distribution and capital call disputes, management agreement disputes, real estate fraud, and lease, guaranty, and Yellowstone claims. Where title is clouded or a transaction is at risk, he moves in the Commercial Division to vacate a notice of pendency or to obtain emergency injunctive relief. He has resolved these matters through mediation and arbitration where that served the client, and tried them to verdict and defended the results on appeal where it did not. Many of them reach him when a closing is stalled, a partner has stopped funding, or fraud has surfaced in a deal. James also handles high-net-worth family real estate disputes, where a family can no longer agree on who controls the portfolio it built.
Fiduciary Breach & Corporate Fraud. James pursues the partners, fiduciaries, and controlling owners who breach the trust placed in them: tracing the misconduct, recovering what was diverted, and restoring the client’s rightful position. That work runs from breach of fiduciary duty, self-dealing, and diversion of corporate opportunity to corporate fraud and looting, misappropriation, fraudulent transfer, alter ego and veil-piercing, successor liability, and asset tracing and recovery. It also reaches claims against the attorneys, escrow agents, and other professionals who enable the conduct, on behalf of the closely held companies, family offices, and private funds these breaches target. These matters are the most time-sensitive he handles: they surface when money is already moving, and the first days decide how much of it can be recovered. James moves immediately for a prejudgment order of attachment or injunctive relief to freeze what remains, in the Commercial Division and in the federal courts for the Southern and Eastern Districts of New York. From there the matter resolves where the leverage lies, through mediation or arbitration, on summary judgment, or at trial and on appeal.
Cooperative & Condominium Governance. James counsels and litigates for cooperative and condominium boards across the New York metro area, from pre-war landmark buildings to signature new construction, and from single-building associations to multi-building communities of several thousand units. He handles contested board elections and takeover defense, where control of the building itself is at stake, and defends board decisions under the business judgment rule. His work spans admissions and transfer denials, alteration disputes, sponsor transition and defect claims, and unit owner and derivative claims, and reaches the regulatory side of building ownership, including Landmarks, facade, and Local Law compliance and RPAPL 881 license proceedings for access to neighboring property. Most of these matters arrive after a board vote has been challenged, a sponsor has walked away from its obligations, or a managing agent’s conduct is in question, and they are litigated in Supreme Court, including in the Commercial Division where the amounts warrant. James serves on the New York City Bar Association’s Cooperative & Condominium Law Committee, one of the working groups that examines how New York’s building law is changing, and he presents continuing legal education programs for other attorneys on litigation strategy and emerging trends in the field, most recently “Cracks in the BJR Shield: Emerging Trends and Litigation Strategies.”
The Legal 500 United States ranks James in its New York Elite rankings for Commercial Disputes, and his peers have recognized him with Martindale-Hubbell’s AV Preeminent rating. Woods Lonergan is ranked in Chambers USA: Spotlight New York for Litigation: General Commercial and Real Estate. His commentary on New York commercial and real estate disputes has been quoted in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Bloomberg Law, Law360, and Forbes.