Still in his mid 30s, Rockland County’s Jim Sexton has already emerged as one of Southern New York’s most accomplished young lawyers. Indeed, if he’s not already, he’s clearly poised to be one of the region’s top divorce attorneys in the years ahead. With a focus, a natural resourcefulness and a rare level of energy, Sexton has already built a successful matrimonial practice based in New City, his hometown. And his personality and temperament are, by all accounts, ideally suited to divorce law, which requires broad knowledge, a genuine interest in people, and an understanding and respect for what’s often an arduous legal process. Thus he loves every detail of his work. Says he: “If I wasn’t practicing matrimonial law, I don’t think I’d be a lawyer.”

Sexton seems to understand his unusual advantage: “I’m an interesting hybrid,” he says, whose mother is a trained nurse and art teacher influenced by the ‘60s, and whose father grew up in the rural south, a U.S. Naval Academy graduate and Vietnam veteran who became a top sales executive in the medical technology field. All those experiences and qualities now seem reflected in Sexton’s own character, marked by industry and drive. “No question I’m obsessive, in almost everything I do.”

At nearby Ramapo College, Sexton majored in psychology and was two years its student body president, all the while working two jobs: He waited tables at a nearby Steak & Ale (“Customers yelling about their $6.99 prime rib prepared me for something”) and counseled patients at West Bergen Mental Health Center in Bergen County, NJ. Considering a career in academe, he pursued a master’s at NYU. His focus: Propaganda Studies. In his early 20s, Sexton took yet another night job, as an instructor with Kaplan Test Prep. “After teaching the LSAT class, I started taking the tests.

Even before finishing law school, hired by well known Rockland County trial attorney (and former DA) William Frank, Sexton spent three years working in divorce litigation. By 2001, still in his late 20s, he launched a practice that grew quickly, to the surprise of rivals many years his senior. Part of Sexton’s secret: He fostered a mean-what-you-say, say-what-you-mean culture that contrasted with the bluffs and posturing common among some lawyers. “If I say we’re going to court, we’re going to court. Don’t fill up my fax machine with all your intentions.” It was a swagger that’s already resulted to several high-profile victories, establishing Sexton early as a formidable courtroom advocate. With two associates today, Sexton’s firm handles Rockland County’s diverse range of divorce cases.

In college Sexton was a 3-pack-a-day smoker, but quit and took up running a decade ago; today he’s a veteran marathoner. For two years he has promoted his “Run Sexton Run” fundraiser for Memorial Sloan Kettering Hospital.

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