James Anthony Wolff, J.D.
James Anthony Wolff, J.D. is a Partner in the Corporate and Innovation & Technology practice groups at Greenspoon Marder LLP, an Am Law 200 full-service firm with more than 215 attorneys across over 20 U.S. offices.
He counsels high-growth founders and investors on complex transactions in artificial intelligence, fintech, medtech, aerospace, and other emerging-technology sectors, drawing on his own background as a serial cofounder.
James also serves on the Board of Directors of the National Space Society and as Director of Development of the Space Court Foundation, an international space-law education and policy nonprofit.
At Greenspoon Marder, where he joined as Partner in January 2026, James focuses on mergers and acquisitions, venture and growth financings, securities, corporate governance, and commercial contracting. As lead transactional counsel, he has built and managed a $240 million strategic client portfolio spanning more than thirty emerging-technology companies, leading high-stakes matters that include a $50 million Series A Regulation D private placement and a $1 million warrant issuance for a dual-use aerospace company.
He routinely advises on Regulation D, CF, and A+ offerings, multi-jurisdictional intellectual-property and founder-vesting frameworks, capital-stack restructuring, AI and digital-asset compliance, including stablecoin integration under emerging GENIUS Act frameworks, and corporate governance audits for companies onboarding to cap-table platforms such as Equity Shift. Read Greenspoon Marder Expands New York Office with Addition of James Wolff.
In March 2026, James coauthored The Berkeley Rule, a first-of-its-kind ethical deployment and oversight protocol for artificial intelligence in municipal government, adopted by the Berkeley City Council on March 10, 2026 alongside a companion measure principally authored by Councilmember Ben Bartlett. The framework sets out ten guidelines for transparency, accountability, and human oversight of AI in public-sector operations.
He authored The Rise of AI Litigation: How Emerging Tech Companies Can Safeguard Their IP and Liability Exposure for the New York Law Journal in 2025, and his recent firm alerts have addressed California’s Venture Capital Reporting Regime: Scope and Implementation.
Before joining Greenspoon Marder, James served from May 2024 to January 2026 as Counsel and Chair of the Emerging Technologies Law Group at Warshaw Burstein, LLP, where he was lead deal counsel on transactions including BlackStar Orbital’s $1 million credit investment from Leonid Capital Partners. Earlier roles include Senior Associate Attorney at Sobel Pevzner, LLC from 2023 to 2024, Associate Attorney at SACCO & FILLAS, LLP from 2018 to 2023, where he handled over 150 multi-million-dollar New York Supreme commercial litigation matters, and Associate at Anderson & Anderson LLP from 2016 to 2018, where he advised a startup fintech company on SEC capitalization matters and authored offering memoranda for smart-contract and market-making consulting.
His early legal career included externships at Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft LLP in 2015, where he produced research and memoranda on Dodd-Frank compliance, ISDA working-group matters, and SIFI designation analysis, and at Nomura in 2014, where he worked on regulatory policy implementation for the CFTC and SEC.
James’s entrepreneurial track record predates his legal practice. In 2013, he cofounded Deep Space Industries, an asteroid-mining and deep-space exploration company that pursued asteroid return and in-space markets for fuel, water, and materials before its acquisition by Bradford Space in 2019. From November 2012 to June 2018, he was Cofounder and Managing Director of D-Shape Enterprises LLC, a Manhattan-based large-format 3D-printer company that secured the first U.S. permit for 3D-printed construction.
Between 2018 and 2024, he served as Strategic Advisor to Space Initiatives Inc., a Titusville, Florida developer of femtospacecraft for low-Earth-orbit constellations that received the NASA Entrepreneur’s Challenge award in 2023 for its Ringside Seats: Mote Lunar Landing Support System proposal and a NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) Phase I award in 2024 for Swarming Proxima Centauri: Coherent Picospacecraft Swarms Over Interstellar Distances.
In 2017, he cofounded Orbital Assembly, a commercial space construction company developing the Errant Object Retrieval drone program, the Segment Truss Assembly Robot, and the rotating orbital Voyager Station, and he served as Chief Business Officer of United Space Structures from 2019 to 2022. His other founding ventures include the Asteroid Mining Group and Buildatron, an early 3D-printing rapid-manufacturing company.
James authored Mastering Business Dynamics: Entrepreneurial Leadership & Strategy, a practitioner’s guide to leadership, design thinking, and innovation strategy released in 2024.
He is a frequent keynote speaker on emerging-technology law, having presented at the National Space Society’s International Space Development Conference 2025, the New York City Bar Association’s 100 Years of Aviation Celebration, Mastercard’s Future of AI Summit at its New York headquarters in 2025, Revolution.Aero 2024 on advanced air mobility, the Future of Humanity Summit in Washington, D.C., LA Tech Week, the U.S. Office of Space Commerce’s Financing the Final Frontier panel, and the New York County Lawyers Association on cryptocurrency law.
Read James A. Wolff Authors Article On The Rise of AI Litigation in the New York Law Journal.
Beyond his legal practice, James has served as Executive Board Member At-Large of the Southern District of New York chapter of the United Nations Association since 2016, and as a UN Committee Member at the New York City Bar Association from 2016 to 2023. He has been Director of Development at the Space Court Foundation since 2020, and was named to the National Space Society Board of Directors in 2024 as an At-Large member.
He previously served as Political Advocacy Coordinator for The Mars Society from 2013 to 2014 and as Board Advisor for SpaceGAMBIT, a DARPA-funded hackerspace consortium developing closed-loop life-support, power, and engineering systems as part of the 100 Year Starship initiative. He is also a member of the American Hellenic Educational Progressive Association, the New York County Lawyers Association, and the New York State Bar Association.
James earned his Juris Doctorate from New York Law School in 2016, where he concentrated in business, government and politics, legislation and regulation, corporate law, intellectual property, and real estate, served at the Business and Financial Law Center and the Financial Services Law Clinic, and was Founding Editor of the NYLS Commercial Loan Report. He earned his Bachelor of Arts in Composition from The Johns Hopkins University in 2008, where he worked at the Johns Hopkins University Electronic Media Lab on multi-media audio-visual installations in collaboration with the Maryland Institute College of Art.
Between 1998 and 2000 he studied composition, conducting, and viola at Interlochen Arts Academy. He is admitted to the New York State Bar, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, and the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York.
James was named to the New York Metro Super Lawyers Rising Stars list for Business and Corporate law in 2021, 2022, and 2023, recognized as one of America’s Most Honored Lawyers by the American Registry in 2023, and received the Martindale-Hubbell Gold Client Champion award in 2017.
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