Attorney Profile

Attorney Profile: Brian D. O'Neill

Brian D. O'Neill is a highly experienced attorney celebrating over three abd a half decades as a member of the New Jersey and Pennsylvania Bars. Born into a U.S. Air Force family in New York, he grew up living all over the U.S. and also spent three years in Italy and Germany. In 1971 he graduated from the University of Maryland with High Honors and a B.A. degree in Government & Politics. After service in the U.S. Navy from 1971 to 1974, O'Neill attended Rutgers-Camden School of Law, where he was on the Editorial Board of the Rutgers-Camden Law Journal. He obtained his J.D. Degree with Honors in 1977.

O'Neill's first three years as an attorney were as a litigator with Rawle & Henderson, a well-known firm in Philadelphia, Pa., where he practiced admiralty law and products liability defense. In 1980, he joined the legal staff of Curtiss-Wright Corporation, a famous aerospace and industrial manufacturer in northern New Jersey. He quickly mastered defense procurement law, and played a leading role in resolving a number of highly complex, high profile government contract suits. After many years handling government contract, commercial, employment and corporate legal matters O'Neill became the chief legal officer of the Company in 1999.

In 2001 O'Neill left corporate life and began a private practice that combines business, employment and immigration law. As with the other challenging new fields he has tackled, in the last decade O'Neill has become a very highly respected immigration advocate. He has proved time and again that he can handle difficult, life-and-death cases that go far beyond routine immigration applications.

O'Neill is, notably, the only attorney in the U.S. to have an immigration court recognize a duress defense, and to grant his client asylum, in the face of a Government claim that the client be deported because he allegedly provided "material support" to a terrorist organization. When that case was reversed on appeal, he was the first immigration lawyer in the U.S. to have the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) grant his client a waiver of the "material support bar," and then to file a joint motion with him in immigration court, to reinstate his client's asylum grant.

O'Neill has prevailed in numerous other asylum applications, including claims with highly sensitive diplomatic implications, and matters where applicants ineligible for asylum proved their cases for relief in immigration court under the more demanding "withholding of removal" and "withholding under the Convention Against Torture" (CAT) standards. He has helped clients from countries as diverse as Morocco, Burkina Faso, Togo and Sierra Leone in West Africa; Sri Lanka and Nepal in Asia; Haiti in the Caribbean and Colombia in South America, all enjoy the right to live and work in America free from the threat of severe persecution, death or torture overseas.

O'Neill has helped green card holders facing removal in immigration court keep their permanent resident status despite convictions by using the "cancellation of removal" defense. He has even won cases for undocumented aliens in immigration court by helping them meet the daunting "extreme and exceptionally unusual hardship" standard for non-permanent resident "cancellation of removal" claims. This has allowed them to win permanent resident status in court after "living in the shadows" in America for ten years or more. In other family-related immigration matters O'Neill has helped numerous alien "battered spouses," who thought their situations were hopeless, win permanent resident status in America by proving that they were the victims of "extreme abuse" by their U.S. citizen spouses.

He is also an accomplished advocate in *Specil Immigrant Juvenile" (SIJ) cases, obtaining permanent residency for children in the United States who have been abandoned or neglected by either one or both of their parents in the home country.

Not Just Excellence in Execution, but a Genuine Interest in the Client's Case.

If, after a consultation, O'Neill decides to take on a client's case, he does so not simply for financial reasons, but because he believes in the client's goals and the possibility of advancing them through the legal process. Countless clients will tell you that they are repeat customers with O'Neill not only for his professional excellence and attention to detail, but also because of the genuine interest he shows in their cases.

A lifetime in law has taught O'Neill the practice of law is not just about pleadings and other legal papers. At its heart is documentary and personal presentation that humanizes individuals and persuades the decision makers they should obtain the relief they seek. When attendance at an immigration interview or a court appearance is necessary, effective presentation is especially critical to success. Because of this, O'Neill spares no effort preparing his clients for the appearances and court hearings that will decide issues of real importance in their lives.

Non-Legal Writings

Outside the law, O'Neill has authored and edited a number of well-received books about American aviation in World War II. Half A Wing, Three Engines and a Prayer: B-17s Over Germany(McGraw-Hill, Special 2nd Ed. 1999) has been continuously in print since the first edition was published in 1989. O'Neill's illustrated history of the U.S. Eighth Air Force's 303rd Bombardment Group (Osprey Publishing Ltd. 2002) is a popular title in Osprey's Aviation Elite series of unit histories. O'Neill also edited and wrote the Forward to Mrs. Jeanne Spencer's World War II-based inspirational autobiography, The Journey (One World Press 2005) .