ABOUT JOHN

For over 40 years, John Raley has tried cases to juries on behalf of individuals, small businesses, hospitals, and Fortune 500 and Fortune 100 companies. His litigation expertise includes complex commercial disputes, products liability, professional liability, patent infringement, trade secrets, personal injuries, securities and common law fraud, wrongful termination, healthcare, constitutional rights, and election contests.  He has argued and won cases before Texas Courts of Appeal, the Texas Supreme Court, the Fifth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, and the Federal Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals. John argued and won a unanimous reversal before the Texas Supreme Court in the case that set the statute of limitations for all general torts in Texas.  He successfully briefed an opposition to a petition for writ of certiorari before the U.S. Supreme Court. His courtroom verdicts, successful appeals, and favorable settlements have made headlines in Texas and nationally throughout his career, and he has been featured in or interviewed by CNN, The Texas Tribune, Texas Monthly, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, NPR, Katie Couric, and “60 Minutes.”

John Raley obtained his B.A summa cum laude in 1981 from the University of Oklahoma, majoring in Letters (History, Literature, and Philosophy), where he was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa, was a Rhodes Scholarship finalist, and played Varsity Football for the OU Sooners. While earning his 1984 J.D. at OU, he served as Note Editor of the Oklahoma Law Review, was a member of the National Mock Trial Team, won Best Speaker Award in the Moot Court Competition, and was inducted into the Order of Barristers. He was awarded a Rotary Fellowship and used it to obtain an LL.M. in International Law from the University of Aberdeen, Scotland.

 Donating his time to pro bono murder exoneration cases, John’s legal work freed five innocent people who had spent a combined 97 years in prison - and once identified and located the true murderer who was apprehended and brought to justice. The landmark “Michael Morton Act” resulting from John’s representation of one exoneree changed Texas law to require prosecutors to provide defense counsel access to investigation information. His pro bono battles to exonerate people wrongfully convicted of murder have been the subject of several documentaries, including Detective Diaries: Guilty Until Proven Innocent on HBO Max, Apple TV, and Amazon Prime, and An Unreal Dream: the Michael Morton Story on Netflix and Amazon Prime. He has also been featured in national podcasts about exonerations of the innocent.

John is rated A-V Preeminent by Martindale-Hubble, is a fellow of the American Board of Trial Advocates, and has been listed as a Texas Monthly “Super Lawyer” since 2003.  He has represented several celebrity clients, including Maya Angelou, Brian Bosworth, Richard “Racehorse” Haynes, and Hilary Duff.  John was named “Houstonian of the Year” by the Houston Chronicle and a top five “Impact Player of Texas” by Texas Lawyer magazine. He received the University of Texas Law School’s annual “Texas Jurist Award,” The Brazos County Bar Association’s annual “Atticus Finch Award,” and HCDLA’s annual “Clarence Darrow Award.” The University of Oklahoma named him to its “Order of the Coif.” John has been named in “The Best Lawyers in America” (Civil Rights Law) since 2023 and “America’s Top 100 High Stakes Litigators” (Texas-Southern) since 2023. Increasingly over the last four years, he has served as a mediator, cherishing Christ’s encouragement of “peacemakers.”