Law Power 50 N-Z

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Melissa Orsen

As senior vice president and general counsel at energy services holding company South Jersey Industries, Orsen is the principal legal officer serving as a key advisor to the CEO, senior management, and of Directors. She oversees the corporate legal and government affairs teams, as well as outside counsel relationships. Orsen was previously CEO of the New Jersey Economic Development Authority, where she directed more than $1 billion in economic development activities across the state. She has also been a chief of staff to the former lieutenant governor, secretary of state and to the Department of Community Affairs.

Sheilah O’Halloran

With a team of nine attorneys, three paralegals, insurance professionals, clinical risk and patient relations managers, and outside counsel across the country, O’Halloran, J.D. is responsible for all legal aspects of Atlantic Health System’s operations, including its six hospitals and annual revenues exceeding $2.6 billion. O’Halloran joined Atlantic Health System in 2010, as assistant general counsel and was named as general counsel in April 2016. O’Halloran and her team navigated the legal, regulatory and proprietary arrangements to make it possible for Atlantic Health employees to bring their ideas to enhance healthcare delivery and lower costs to life through Atlantic Health Advancements (Aha!) – while also sharing in the benefits from their creations. O’Halloran was instrumental in creating the legal framework for Atlantic and six other hospital organizations to form the Healthcare Transformation Consortium. This innovative arrangement brings together competing organizations to collectively lower costs and enhance care and access for the 75,000 employees across these organizations.

William Palatucci

It’s tough to be influential as a Republican in New Jersey these days, given the pallid state of the party here. But Palatucci, a partner at Gibbons, is still a member of the Republican National Committee and so retains some measure of clout within the GOP at least. During the Christie administration, he was recognized as a power player in the national party and served as general counsel to the Trump transition committee. As the presidential race heats up, Palatucci’s stature in the party and his contacts nationwide should once again put him in the forefront of electoral politics. Palatucci serves on the Board of Visitors of the Seton Hall University School of Law and on the National Advisory Board for the Rutgers University Heldrich Center.

Dan Schwartz

Schwartz has been at the helm of Chiesa Shahinian & Giantomasi since 2016, and has been a player at the firm since 1983. He is the driving force behind CSG’s stockpiling of former federal prosecutors, with Danielle Corcione and Erik Sandstedt coming on since this time last year. Firm revenue and attorney count grew three percent and five percent respectively over the last year, and in the last year, he’s overseen the development of immigration, alternative capital, and qualified opportunity zone groups. Schwartz practices in the areas of corporate and securities, mergers and acquisitions, banking and finance and health care and hospital law. His corporate law experience includes counseling clients that range from small, closely held businesses to Fortune 500 companies. His counsel on mergers, acquisitions and project finance transactions helped close deals valued in the hundreds of millions of dollars. In addition, he chartered several New Jersey banking institutions and regularly represents both lenders and borrowers in complex financial transactions. In the health law field, Schwartz provides regulatory, personal and business planning services to medical professionals and their practices.

Kevin D. Sheehan

As the Murphy administration has ramped up its scrutiny of how the state’s multi-billion dollar corporate tax breaks were crafted and administered, Sheehan has emerged as one of the key players in crafting the existing incentive program. The New York Times reported that Sheehan wrote amendments put into the New Jersey Economic Opportunity Act of 2013 creating the Grow New Jersey credits in order to benefit clients of Parker McCay – the law firm where he is a partner and that is run by Philip Norcross, brother of South Jersey powerbroker George Norcross. Some of the businesses that benefited from these amendments, according to the Times and Murphy’s tax break task force, have strong ties to George and include Conner Strong & Buckelew where George is executive chairman, as well as The Michaels Organization and NFI. The revelations about Sheehan’s role helped shaped the debate around what the new tax incentives should be, and fueled a political feud between the governor and Senate President Stephen Sweeney.

Dave Sorin

Sorin is a venture capital attorney and office managing partner at law firm McCarter & English, with 34 years of legal experience. According to the firm, Sorin focuses primarily on privately and publicly owned startup, early stage, emerging growth, and middle market technology, tech-enabled and life science enterprises, as well as the investors, executives, and directors who support and lead them. Sorin has a track record of successful representation of growth companies, having been repeatedly recognized for a unique combination of legal acumen and sound business judgment.

Tami Bogutz Steinberg

Steinberg is a corporate lawyer for startup companies at Flaster Greenberg. According to her employer, Steinberg represents entrepreneurs and closely held businesses, assisting companies across a range of industries, and with multiple diverse legal issues. She emphasizes mergers and acquisitions, financings, joint ventures, partnership and shareholder transactions, dispute resolutions, corporate governance and contracting, and private placements. Steinberg specializes in the area of business breakups. She represents both minority and majority shareholders/partners and other disenfranchised parties and she counsels business owners in how to protect themselves in the event of business disputes.

Michael H. Ullmann

Ullmann is executive vice president, general counsel of Johnson & Johnson and a member of the company’s Executive Committee and Management Committee. He has worldwide responsibility for legal, government affairs and policy, global security, aviation and health care compliance and privacy. Ullmann joined Johnson & Johnson as a mergers and acquisitions attorney in 1989 and has held various management positions in the company’s Law Department since 1999. Before assuming his current position in 2012, Ullmann served as general counsel of the Worldwide Medical Devices Group for six years. He also served as corporate secretary from 1999 to 2006. He is a member of the Board of Directors of Americares, the Board of Trustees for the Princeton Area Community Foundation and the Rutgers Institute for Ethical Leadership Executive Business Cabinet and serves on the Columbia Law School Board of Visitors.

Jim Walden

As the chief counsel and arguably most vocal member of the task force Gov. Phil Murphy convened to investigate the state’s corporate tax break program, Walden has been one of the faces of that effort. Walden – a former federal prosecutor and now a partner at Walden Macht & Haran LLP – has been the figure grilling witnesses and drawing out documents during the hearings. Whatever the outcome, the allegations Walden and the task force have brought to light have shaped the debate over the incentive program and how incentives are likely to be doled out in the future.

Kevin Walsh

As the executive director of Fair Share Housing Authority, Walsh plays a large role in how residential development takes place in the state. Simply put, no affordable housing settlement is being undertaken without the FSHA having a say. In a broader sense, both FSHA and Walsh could play a role in the retention and growth of the state’s working economy. Under Walsh’s direction the FSHA has reached 275 settlements with municipalities regarding their affordable housing obligations throughout the state. That work will result in tens of thousands of new homes throughout the state and will help New Jerseyans who struggle with high housing prices.

Ted Wells

Wells is a partner at New York’s Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, but his professional roots run deep in New Jersey. He was a partner at Roseland’s Lowenstein Sandler when he made his name as a go-to lawyer with his successful defense of former Hudson County Prosecutor Harold Ruvoldt against federal extortion charges. He’s also represented former U.S. Sen. Robert Torricelli and Exxon Mobil Corp. The latter case continues to ripple through the state’s legal and political establishment with questions about whether the Christie administration settled the natural resources damage suit for too little. Wells’ current New Jersey case work is handling the defense in a lawsuit brought by entities affiliated with George Norcross against Gov. Phil Murphy’s task force investigating the state’s corporate tax break programs. When prominent New Jerseyans need a high-powered lawyer, they often look across the Hudson for Ted Wells.

Gary Wingens

In Wingens’ first year at the helm of Lowenstein Sandler, firm-wide revenue hit $175 million. After a decade under his leadership, the firm brought in $309 million in 2018. Law.com reported that only 11 of the top 200 U.S. firms grew more than 10 percent from 2017 to 2018, and Lowenstein was one of them, jumping 14 percent. In the last decade, the firm’s New York office has more than tripled, and offices have grown from its Roseland HQ to offices in Palo Alto, California; Washington, D.C.; and Utah. It’s not just quantity, though, it’s quality: big names like former state attorneys general Chris Porrino and Anne Milgram have joined in recent years. One of Wingens’ first actions as managing partner in 2008 was to create the Lowenstein Center for the Public Interest, which has recently dedicated extra effort to the separation of families and children at the country’s southern border by representing legal service providers for children in ongoing class actions and by mobilizing 30-plus law firms to advocate for the legal rights of immigrant children.

Freda Wolfson

Wolfson took over as chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey when Jose Linares stepped down from the bench in May. After graduating from Rutgers Law School, Wolfson began her legal career at Rosenstein Sandler and the now-defunct Clapp & Eisenberg. She served as a federal magistrate from 1986 to 2002, when President George W. Bush appointed her top the district court.

Jennifer Zachary

Zachary has been Executive Vice President and General Counsel of Merck & Co. Inc. since April 16, 2018. Before joining Merck, Zachary was a partner at Covington & Burling from 2013 to 2018. She also served as an associate chief counsel for enforcement of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Office of Chief Counsel from 2005 to 2011 and was a special assistant U.S. attorney in the Civil Division of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia in 2009.

Ted Zangari

Zangari is the man to see about investing in Opportunity Zones. A member of Sills, Cummis & Gross and chair of the firm’s real estate department along with its government relations and public policy and redevelopment law practices, he is often interviewed for articles and tapped for speaking engagements on the subject. In a ranking of “politically influential law firms” by politickernj.com, the firm was ranked number one among Am Law 200 law firms in New Jersey, and Zangari was described as someone who is “well liked by insiders on both sides of the aisle.” He steers a team on large-scale mixed use projects including land assemblage, redeveloper designations and agreements, tax increment financing and other public incentives. Zangari currently serves on the Executive Committee and Board of Directors of the NJ State Chamber of Commerce. He is also a founding member of the Rutgers University Center for Real Estate, where he serves on the Center’s Executive Committee, and is also a member of the Board of Trustees of George Washington University’s Center for Real Estate and Urban Analysis.

More from the 2019 NJBIZ Power 100:

• No. 1: Philip Norcross
• No. 2: Gurbir Grewal
• No. 3: Nancy Erika Smith
• No. 4: Jerry Zaro
• No. 5: Deborah Hays
• No. 6: John Fanburg
• No. 7: Matt Platkin
• No. 8: Kim Guadagno
• No. 9: Evelyn Padin
• No. 10: Stuart Rabner
• Law Power 50: A-M
• Presenting the 2019 NJBIZ Law Power 50