James H. Tily

I am a Salt Lake City attorney. I practice on my own and I handle every case personally.

I grew up along Philadelphia's Main Line, graduated from Pennsylvania State University, and earned my J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center in 2000. While I was in law school I worked in the legal department of the Communications Workers of America, a national labor union in Washington, D.C. I started in the law library, and when Westlaw replaced the print subscriptions I moved into legal work. That included arbitration and mediation, labor and employment litigation in federal court, class action wage and race discrimination cases, sexual harassment matters, ADA and FMLA matters, unfair labor practice proceedings before the National Labor Relations Board, collective bargaining enforcement, and litigation arising from the 1980 AT&T breakup ordered by Judge Harold Greene.

After Georgetown I joined Anderson & Karrenberg in Salt Lake City, where I did pre-trial motion practice in federal and state court. I worked on commercial disputes including matters for Novell, Inc., and on the Stenovich shareholder class action, a breach of fiduciary duty case arising from First Security Corporation's merger with Wells Fargo.

All of that happened between 2000 and 2004. Here is what happened next.

On July 3, 2003 I committed a robbery. While out on bail, I practiced as a public defender in Washington County, Utah. On March 9, 2004 I pled guilty to it as a second degree felony. I was suspended from the practice of law and disbarred in 2005. In 2008 the conviction was reduced to a class A misdemeanor under Utah Code section 76-3-402. I did not practice law for the next twenty one years. I worked as a cook, I washed dishes, and taught tennis. In August 2025, after retaking the bar exam and completing the Utah State Bar's readmission process, I was reinstated. I put this in my biography, because a person deciding whether to trust me with a criminal case is entitled to know it before he calls, not after.

Since my reinstatement in August 2025, I have been in Utah courtrooms nearly every week, in Salt Lake, Davis, Weber, Utah and Juab counties. I handle criminal defense, including felonies, DUIs, misdemeanors, domestic violence, sex offenses, and protective orders. I handle expungements and 402 reductions. I also handle civil litigation, including defamation, breach of contract, landlord tenant disputes, divorce, DCFS proceedings, and civil stalking injunctions.