A Purpose-Driven Attorney
Jeff Grant is the real deal… I can’t imagine there is a lawyer in this country more qualified to help high-stakes clients navigate complex legal and business challenges. – Evan Osnos, The New Yorker
Jeff Grant is on a mission. After a hiatus from practicing law, Jeff has founded the law firm of GrantLaw, PLLC, is once again in private practice in New York City and is committed to using his legal expertise and life experience to benefit others.
GrantLaw, PLLC offers comprehensive services for executives, entrepreneurs, and professionals managing complex legal, financial, and personal matters. Whether clients are proactively structuring their affairs to expand and/or mitigate risk, responding to regulatory inquiries, or seeking to rebuild after past legal difficulties, we provide discreet, strategic guidance to help them move forward with confidence.
We assist clients in making and executing critical business, financial, and family decisions, ensuring they have the best possible foundation for long-term success. Our work often involves risk assessment, compliance strategies, crisis management, and reputation preservation. When necessary, we also provide guidance on pardons, expungement, and clemency.
We practice in New York and on authorized federal matters, and frequently collaborate and serve as co-counsel with local counsel, criminal defense lawyers and other professionals throughout the country. In criminal prosecution settings. we help clients navigate these issues with an eye toward the best possible outcomes in areas such as charging decisions, sentencing, restitution, and forfeiture.
To deliver holistic support, we believe that experts should be brought into the process as early as possible. To this end, we assemble, manage, coordinate and collaborate with a network of trusted professionals, including criminal defense attorneys, tax attorneys, bankruptcy lawyers, family lawyers, civil litigators, estate and trust lawyers, accountants, private investigators, fraud examiners, mitigation specialists, medical doctors and psychiatrists, forensic psychologists, drug and alcohol interventionists, prison consultants, white collar peer and support resources, and more.
And, of course, we are honored to serve clients who seek our strategic counsel outside of crisis situations, providing trusted, long-term legal guidance tailored to their evolving needs.
Guiding people forward in their lives
In 2012, Jeff earned a Master of Divinity from Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York, majoring in Social Ethics. After graduating, Jeff was called to serve at an inner city church in Bridgeport, CT as Associate Minister and Director of Prison Ministries. He then co-founded Progressive Prison Ministries, Inc. (Greenwich, CT), the world’s first ministry devoted to serving those navigating the white collar justice system and their families. Since 2016, Jeff has hosted a weekly online confidential White Collar Support Group (the first in the country). The support group has had more than 1300 participants. It held its 450th weekly online meeting in February 2025.
An ordained minister, Jeff has more than three decades of experience in crisis management, business, law, reentry, addiction recovery, plus executive and religious leadership. He works frequently with people prosecuted for white collar crimes (and their families) who want to emerge from isolation and join a supportive community. In this role he helps them navigate their journey through the criminal justice system to new, ethical, productive, joyful lives on the other side of their issues.
Sometimes referred to in the press as “The Minister to Hedge Funders,” Jeff regularly uses his experience and background to guide people forward in their lives, relationships, careers, and business opportunities – and help them avoid making the kinds of decisions that resulted in loss, suffering, and shame.
Service and more service
A verified Psychology Today pastoral counselor, he also serves on the ministry team at St. Joseph Mission Church (Cliffside Park, NJ).
From 2016 – 2019, Jeff served as Executive Director of Family ReEntry, Inc. (Bridgeport, CT), a 100+ person criminal justice organization with offices and programs in eight Connecticut cities. Jeff is the first person in the United States formerly incarcerated for a white collar crime to be appointed Executive Director of a major criminal justice nonprofit.
Jeff has served on numerous criminal justice-related Boards. They include the Legal Action Center (New York, NY), Co-Chair, American Bar Association Criminal Justice Section Parole, Probation & Reentry Committee, (Washington, DC), American Bar Association Lawyers Assistance Programs Advisory Commission (Chicago, IL) , Co-Chair, Mayor’s Advisory Council on Reentry Affairs (Bridgeport, CT), Family ReEntry (Bridgeport, CT), Community Partners in Action (formerly the Connecticut Prison Association, Hartford, CT), and Healing Communities Network (New York, NY). He has also served on the Advisory Boards of Creative Projects Group (Los Angeles, CA) and Reentry Survivors (Bridgeport, CT).
Recognition and more recognition
Jeff was twice selected a Nantucket Project Scholar (2012, 2014) and was recognized by JustLeadershipUSA as one of 15 Inaugural National Leaders in Criminal Justice (2015). He was selected a Keepers of the Commons Fellow (2017) and a Keepers of the Commons Senior Fellow (2018). Jeff has been the recipient of the Elizabeth Bush Award for Volunteerism (2011), received the Bridgeport Reentry Collaborative Advocate of the Year Award (2013, 2014, 2015), and was selected the Bridgeport Reentry Collaborative Professional of the Year (2016, 2017, 2018, 2019). He has also been recognized by the Connecticut Coalition Against Domestic Violence (2017) and by the Connecticut NAACP (2017), and was selected a 2019 Collegeville Institute Writing Fellow.
A Professional Member of the National Speakers Association, Jeff is an in-demand keynote speaker, panelist, moderator, and guest preacher. Speaking venues include Main Stage Presenter at The Nantucket Project (Nantucket, MA), American Bar Association Criminal Justice Conference (Washington, DC), Association of Certified Fraud Examiners Webinar (December 2022), the Greenwich Leadership Forum (Greenwich, CT), the Corrections Ministries and Chaplains Association (CMCA) Correctional Ministry Summit (Wheaton College, IL and Philadelphia, PA), Delaware Trust Conference (Wilmington, DE), Salons at Stowe – Harriet Beecher Stowe Center (Hartford, CT), Community Health Network of Connecticut Social Determinants of Health Summit (Wallingford, CT), The Neighborhood Project (Greenwich, CT), U.S. Small Business Administration Conference (Fairfield, CT), Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York (NY, NY), Yale Divinity School (New Haven, CT).
Jeff has also spoken at many universities, colleges, and religious institutions across the country. For information or to book Jeff to speak, guest preach, or for a panel or other presentation, please see his e-speakers profile here.
Magazines, radio, television, podcasts, books
Jeff has authored, been the subject of, or been prominently mentioned in many national and regional publications. They include The New Yorker, Entrepreneur, Bloomberg, Bloomberg Law,, Wells Street with CNBC’s Jane Wells, Reuters, American Bar Association Criminal Justice Magazine, Business Insider, Forbes, Philadelphia Inquirer, Vanity Fair, Greenwich Magazine, Law360, Inc., The Huffington Post, Absolute Return/HedgeFund Intelligence, Institutional Investor, CFO Dive, New York Magazine, Corporate Crime Reporter, Fairfield County Business Journal, Nonprofit Quarterly, Greenwich Country Capitalist, and many others.
He authored a chapter in the book, Suicide and Its Impact on the Criminal Justice System (2021), served on the Editorial Board of the book The Justice Imperative: How Hyper-Incarceration has Hijacked the American Dream (2014), and was prominently mentioned/quoted in the books Wildland: The Making of America’s Fury (2021), Trusted White Collar Offenders: Global Case Studies of Crime Convenience (2021) and the Teal Book of Wisdom (2022).
Jeff has been featured or interviewed on many radio shows, televisions segments and podcasts. They include the Rich Roll Podcast, Locked In with Ian Bick, PRETEND podcast with Javier Leiva, Inside True Crime with Matt Cox, The JustPod (the American Bar Association criminal justice podcast), The Confessional with Nadia Bolz-Weber, Nightmare Success podcast with Brent Cassity, Newsy, Presumption of Innocence podcast with Matt Adams, Business Talk with Jim Campbell, the Colin McEnroe Show on WNPR, The Lawyer Millionaire podcast, the Fraud Stories podcast, the Taxgirl Podcast, Landmark Recovery Radio, Clara CFO podcast with Hanna Smolinski, and Founders Focus podcast with Scott Case, among many others.
Jeff is also editor of the important, widely-read website and blog prisonist.org, for which he authors, edits, and curates content around national and international criminal justice advocacy/ministry issues. He also co-hosted the Criminal Justice Insider radio show and podcast, and hosted the White Collar Week podcast.