John B. Kearney is a partner in the Litigation Department of Ballard Spahr LLP and a member of several firm practice groups including Products Liability and Mass Tort, Class Action Litigation, Privacy and Data Security, and Environmental and Natural Resources. He is also a member of the firm’s National Trial Team and the office managing partner of the firm’s New Jersey office in Cherry Hill, NJ.
For four decades, Mr. Kearney has been an active civil trial lawyer. His complex litigation practice over the years has covered a wide range of substantive areas of the law ranging from chemical exposure cases to superfund litigation to complex commercial contract disputes and class actions in both the New Jersey state and federal courts.
Mr. Kearney has served as a Trustee of the Association of the Federal Bar of New Jersey since 2011 and is a New Jersey Fellow of the American Bar Foundation. He is also a past Chair of the New Jersey State Bar Association’s Product Liability and Mass Tort Section and was recently awarded that section’s Dreier Award for Excellence in and Advancement of Product Liability and Mass Tort Law in New Jersey.
Mr. Kearney has been chosen by The Best Lawyers In America for Commercial Litigation and Product Liability Litigation – Defendants for 2013-2017. He also has been chosen by Chambers USA: America’s Leading Lawyers for Business for Litigation: General Commercial Law for 2007-2016.
Mr. Kearney heads Ballard Spahr’s Litigation Practice Group in New Jersey which was chosen by the New Jersey Law Journal as the 2016 Litigation Department of the Year – Large Firm.
Mr. Kearney is a member of the New Jersey and Pennsylvania Bars, as well as the American, New Jersey State, and Camden County Bar Associations. He is also admitted to practice in the United States District Courts for New Jersey and the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, and the United States Supreme Court.
Mr. Kearney graduated from The College of the Holy Cross, magna cum laude, in 1973 and the University of Pennsylvania Law School in 1976 where he served as an Arthur Littleton Legal Writing Fellow (1975-76).
Mr. Kearney previously taught Pre-Trial Advocacy at Rutgers Law School in 2008. He frequently writes and lectures on various topics including social media and its effect on lawyers, litigants and jurors.