Graham H.
Ryan
- Position
- Partner
- Office
- New Orleans
Graham Ryan is a partner in the Litigation Practice Group. Graham resolves complex business disputes through civil litigation and appeals in federal and state courts for a diverse group of clients spanning numerous industries. He serves on the boards of numerous organizations.
Graham concentrates his practice on commercial civil litigation in federal and state courts, and has extensive experience in Louisiana substantive and procedural law and appeals. He has cross-industry litigation experience in the areas of business disputes, breach of contract, torts, real estate and construction, banking and financial services litigation, and other areas of complex commercial litigation. Graham represents a cross-industry regional and national client base that spans banking, healthcare, construction, and energy. In addition to his trial and appellate practice, Graham has developed a focus on pre-trial strategy and resolution and has successfully resolved many complex cases through summary judgment and dispositive relief in advance of trial.
Graham is an active member of the legal profession and the community at the local, statewide, and national levels. He has served on the board of numerous professional organizations, including the Louisiana State Law Institute, the American Bar Association YLD, the Louisiana Bar Association YLD, the New Orleans Association of Defense Counsel, and the Jefferson Parish Bar Association YLD. He was elected to represent Louisiana in the American Bar Association House of Delegates, which establishes national policy on issues pertaining to the legal professional and the public. He was named a Fellow of the Louisiana Bar Foundation and has served as the Louisiana Delegate to US Fifth Circuit Judicial Conference. Graham also served as co-chair of the Litigation Committee for the American Bar Association YLD, the largest young lawyer organization in the world with more than 150,000 members.
In his community, Graham is past chairman of HandsOn New Orleans, a nonprofit volunteer center formed in the wake of Hurricane Katrina that has engaged more than 60,000 volunteers to rebuild southern Louisiana. He was also chair of Barristers for Boards, a collaboration with the United Way to train and place lawyers on the boards of directors of Louisiana nonprofits. Graham serves as a volunteer attorney to the homeless and veteran population in New Orleans through Project H.E.L.P. (Homeless Experience Legal Protection) and volunteers with The Pro Bono Project. He was named a fellow of the Loyola Institute of Politics and is a graduate of several leadership institutes.
Graham also leads several access-to-justice initiatives. He served a three-year term leading Louisiana’s Disaster Legal Services program, which provides free legal assistance to low-income Louisianans following a presidentially declared disaster, and which helped a record-setting 4,300 Louisianans displaced by the historic Louisiana flood of 2016. Graham also led Louisiana’s first justice hackathon, which paired app developers with public interest lawyers to develop smartphone apps that provide legal help to low-income residents.
Before joining Jones Walker, Graham served as a judicial extern for the Louisiana Supreme Court. He also studied law at Université Jean Moulin Lyon 3 in France, where he received an award for his studies on constitutional law and the European Union.