Christopher P. Kelly, Esq.

Founding Member

Over the course of his more than thirty-year career, Chris has represented both plaintiffs and defendants in a broad range of legal matters, with a particular concentration in civil rights employment litigation, the enforcement of restrictive covenants, complex commercial litigation, business divorce litigation involving minority shareholder oppression, and intellectual property litigation. He also has broad experience negotiating complex real estate and business transactions, including commercial loans, purchase and sale agreements, shareholder agreements, and commercial leases.

Comfortable in any courtroom against any adversary, Chris has squared off against some of the top litigators in the United States. He has tried and arbitrated dozens of cases, including in the Superior Court of New Jersey, the Supreme Court of the State of New York, the federal courts in the Southern and Eastern Districts of New York, and before the American Arbitration Association. Most recently, in early 2020, just prior to the pandemic, Chris and Reppert Kelly & Vytell member Nicholas Vytell served as counsel for the plaintiff in a month-long age discrimination and retaliation jury trial against the City of Union City in the Superior Court of New Jersey, Hudson County. The jury in that case returned a verdict in favor of their client on all counts, which led to a seven figure post-trial settlement.

Chris also has extensive appellate court experience. In Viscik v. Fowler Equipment Co., Inc., 173 N.J. 1 (2002), he argued for the plaintiff, in a landmark decision by the Supreme Court of New Jersey that established morbid obesity as a recognized disability under the New Jersey Law Against Discrimination. In Tomassi v. Insignia Fin. Group, Inc., 478 F.3d 111 (2d Cir. 2007), he convinced the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit to overturn a lower court summary judgment decision entered by then federal District Judge (and later, United States Attorney General) Michael Mukasey that had dismissed his client’s age discrimination case. The Tomassi case has been cited over 500 times in decisions by other courts and legal publications. In Barna v. Estate of Meyers, 2015 WL 3998817 (App. Div. 2015), Chris successfully argued and defended an appeal after prevailing in a dual track 13-day arbitration and 3-day bench trial against one of New Jersey’s most prolific trial lawyers in a multi-million-dollar dispute between shareholders of an automotive dealership and related commercial property. He has handled numerous other appeals in state Appellate Divisions in New Jersey and New York in a variety of other employment and business contexts.