E. Danya Perry

Danya is a founding partner at Perry Law. She is a nationally recognized white collar criminal defense attorney and commercial litigator who has obtained tremendous results on behalf of her clients. Danya is as equally gifted at litigating high-profile matters in court and in the press as she is at navigating backchannels to obtain quiet victories for her clients. Danya has represented corporations and individual officers, directors, employees, and shareholders in criminal prosecutions, civil litigations, and grand jury and regulatory investigations conducted by federal and state government agencies and offices. Danya’s criminal defense practice includes representing clients in cases involving allegations of fraud, extortion, money laundering, sanctions violations, and corruption, among other charges, and she has successfully secured declinations of charges, favorable pleas, settlements, and extraordinary downward departures at sentencing. Danya also maintains an active practice representing clients in matters involving sexual assault, discrimination, and harassment. For example, she currently represents a number of survivors of sexual assault in a civil litigation against a major public institution, pushing back the antiquated notions that male sexual abuse survivors are somehow not as vulnerable as female survivors or as deserving of recompense. More broadly, a large part of Danya’s docket is her representation of clients in employment matters, on both sides of the “v.” She also regularly handles independent corporate investigations.

Danya is the founding partner of Perry Law. Prior to this undertaking, she spent five years as the Chief of Litigation and Deputy General Counsel at MacAndrews & Forbes Incorporated, followed by four years successfully directing a boutique litigation firm. At MacAndrews & Forbes, she managed and advised all aspects of the company’s complex commercial litigation, compliance, and regulatory matters, including in areas of mergers and acquisitions, contract, antitrust, intellectual property, consumer fraud, and employment law. Danya led and coordinated teams of in-house and outside attorneys in the prosecution and defense of all litigation matters. She was responsible for developing, implementing, and enforcing best-in-class compliance programs across the holding company and its operating companies, and she provided guidance to executive management in a broad array of legal and business issues, including in areas of business risk, corporate governance, internal investigations, and best practices.

In 2013, Danya was appointed by the Governor and the Attorney General to serve as Deputy Attorney General for the State of New York and Chief of Investigations for the Moreland Commission to Investigate Public Corruption. In this role, she led a sweeping investigation into public corruption in New York State, recommended policies for systemic reform, and referred numerous matters for criminal prosecution.

From 2002 to 2013, Danya served as an Assistant United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, including as Senior Trial Counsel and Deputy Chief of the Criminal Division. As an Assistant U.S. Attorney, she investigated, prosecuted, and supervised hundreds of sophisticated white collar cases, including the prosecution of a billion-dollar health care fraud, the largest immigration fraud and tax preparer frauds in the history of the United States, and one of the largest identity theft rings in the United States.

In late 2023, Danya was appointed as a Criminal Justice Act (CJA) Panelist for the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York to serve as appointed counsel to criminal defendants, ensuring they receive due process and zealous representation.

Danya also serves as an adjunct professor of law at New York University School of Law, where she will teach Professional Responsibility this coming spring. She has previously taught a trial advocacy and prosecution clinic. Early in her career, Danya worked at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison and clerked for a federal district judge in the Southern District of New York.

Danya is a graduate of Harvard College and Yale Law School. Nationally recognized as an industry expert, Danya frequently speaks on white collar and enforcement panels and is a regular media commentator, including on MSNBC, CNN, and BBC. Danya has written a number of op-eds and articles, including for the New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, the New York Daily News, and Law360. She is a champion sub 3-hour marathoner and a proud single mother of three.