Kings College – 1968 Summa Cum Laude
Mr. Gilbride is AV rated by Martindale-Hubbell, the highest recognition given for professional excellence, skills, and integrity. From 1971 to 1975 he was an associate and then partner with Paul, Landy, Beiley. In 1975 he was co-founder of Gilbride and Heller, later to become Gilbride, Heller and Brown, P.A., which was a boutique complex commercial litigation firm with a national client base. It served its clients for over 35 years. During said time Mr. Gilbride periodically served as managing partner. Upon withdrawing from the firm he opened the Law Office of James F. Gilbride, P.A., where he currently practices law, and provides mediation services to the legal community.
James F. Gilbride is one of the select attorneys in the United States that has brought to verdict both complex commercial cases and major federal criminal cases. Mr. Gilbride has over 100 jury trials, 40 reported appellate decisions, and has litigated in 20 federal jurisdictions.
He has successfully argued a 29-week federal jury trial involving lender liability and the defense of a multi-million dollar foreclosure and obtained a verdict of $15 million.
Mr. Gilbride has successfully handled in excess of 100 broker-dealer securities cases on both the defense side and later on the plaintiff’s side. These cases involved churning, margin violations, fraud, misrepresentation, negligence, lack of diversification, unauthorized trading, unsuitable investments and regulatory violations.
He has obtained numerous six and seven figure verdicts in the trial of commercial cases.
Mr. Gilbride defended for a significant portion of his career the largest religious institution in the world. That representation alone required application of legal principles in constitutional law, sexual abuse by clergy, and actions involving educational institutions ranging from parochial schools, to a university and its law school. As a result of the fact that this client is one of South Florida’s largest employers, he was required to defend all types of labor related litigation stemming from the operations of an entity of that magnitude.
In addition, he defended actions brought against its three nursing homes and its hospital and brought actions relating to construction and design defects on the building of churches and schools.
Moreover, Mr. Gilbride represented the nation’s largest supplier of building products and the cases arising out of their product liability or defective installation.
He also has extensive experience in handling the civil and criminal aspects of significant criminal cases. He was engaged to be lead counsel for the “E” in the ESM securities fraud scheme involving over one-half billion dollars which shut down the State of Ohio banking system for several weeks. This case resulted in two federal indictments and one state indictment as well as civil actions brought by the SEC and receiver-trustee.
He was also lead civil and criminal counsel to one of the two major perpetrators of the half billion dollar Premium Sales food diversion Ponzi scheme.
Similarly he handled the collapse of a Tampa based brokerage house. His criminal experience involved the representation of clients facing international extradition, securities fraud, Medicare fraud, tax fraud, major narcotic trafficking, Bahamian land fraud, money laundering and the full spectrum of federal and state criminal indictments.
Mr. Gilbride believes that the experience he has attained by litigating and in many instances trying the most complex civil and criminal matters offers his clients the opportunity to analyze cases from multiple perspectives. He has handled a myriad of common law and statutory issues that cover the spectrum of legal causes of action.
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