The Honourable James Farley, QC was appointed to the Superior Court, then named the Supreme Court of Ontario, in 1989. Since its inception in 1991 and until his retirement on May 1, 2006, he acted as supervising judge of the Commercial List in Toronto. The Commercial List deals with complex corporate / commercial litigation in addition to its insolvency foundation. He also took a periodic rotation in the Criminal List. He is a graduate of the University of Western Ontario (BA 1962), University of Oxford (Rhodes Scholar; BA 1964; MA 1968) and the University of Toronto (LLB 1966). He was called to the Ontario bar in 1968 and practised as a corporate / commercial solicitor.
He has returned to the bar in August 2006 as Senior Counsel to McCarthy Tétrault LLP. He is working with the business law, bankruptcy and restructuring and litigation groups on a firm-wide basis, including work on cross-border initiatives, providing clients with strategic business, litigation and insolvency-related advice.
He is a member of the International Insolvency Institute, Insolvency Institute of Canada, Insol International, American Law Institute, American College of Bankruptcy, American Bankruptcy Institute, International Bar Association and International Law Association. He has participated in the American Law Institute NAFTA transnational insolvency project, the INSOL / UNCITRAL judicial colloquia and the World Bank insolvency practices project. As well he has delivered papers on various topics including insolvency, corporate law, commercial courts, ADR, WTO and law practice management in Canada, the USA, England, China, Nigeria, Bermuda, Germany, France, the Bahamas, Jamaica, Brazil, Austria, Tanzania, New Zealand, Argentina, Australia, South Africa, India, the British Virgin Islands and Mexico.