Wesley Gryk

Wesley Gryk, senior partner and founder of the firm, is a dual British-American national and has practised law in both countries. He obtained his BA(Hons) from Harvard College and his JD(Hons) from Harvard Law School. He also attended the University of Warsaw for one year on a Fulbright Fellowship. He began his legal career as judicial clerk to the late Honorable Constance Baker Motley, US District Judge in the Southern District of New York (Manhattan), who was the first black woman appointed to the US Federal Judiciary. He went on to work for four years for Shearman and Sterling, a large New York corporate law firm, first in New York City and then in Hong Kong.

He moved to the United Kingdom in 1980 to take up the post of Deputy Representative and Legal Adviser to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and went on to work in London for the International Secretariat of Amnesty International for five years, first as its Deputy Legal Adviser and then as the Deputy Head of the organisation's research department. After retraining to become a solicitor in this country, he worked for a number of years with the highly respected civil liberties lawyer Ben Birnberg of B.M. Birnberg and Co, before setting up Wesley Gryk Solicitors in 1995. Wesley is a member of the Law Society Council, the governing body for solicitors in England and Wales, with responsibility for immigration matters. He previously was a board member of the Refugee Legal Centre, the Redress Trust and the Legal Aid Practitioners Group. He has travelled extensively on international human rights missions having, for example, attended the trial of Saddam Hussein in Iraq and of Abdullah Ocalan in Turkey on behalf of Amnesty International and the trial of former Deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim in Malaysia on behalf of Human Rights Watch. He was involved in much of the litigation, campaigning and lobbying which resulted in the implementation of the current unmarried partners and civil partnership rules and he continues to undertake voluntary work on these issues.

His practice covers the full range of immigration issues and, in particular, his strength in gay rights cases is well acknowledged. He also represents individuals who are challenging decisions taken under the Human Rights Act which would remove them from the UK to a country where they will no longer be able to receive life-saving medical treatment. He has represented the UNHCR in two important House of Lords cases relating to immigration law - Shah and Islam, about the persecution of women in Pakistan, and Sepet and Bulbul, relating to conscientious objection in Turkey.

Alison Hunter

Alison Hunter, who became a partner in the firm on 1 October 2006, was educated in Switzerland, Germany and the United Kingdom. She read law with French law at King's College, London and went on to do a Masters degree in Human Rights Law at University College, London. After her training at Freshfields, she joined Wesley Gryk Solicitors in 1997 as a solicitor. Her practice covers all aspects of immigration and nationality law, with particular emphasis on EU free movement law, asylum and human rights law. She maintains close links with German lawyers and academics working in the field of immigration. She was formerly a visiting lecturer for immigration law at Westminster University and a Management Committee Member of the Centre for Advice on Individual Rights in Europe and a board member of the Immigration Law Practitioners' Association.

Barry O'Leary

Barry O'Leary, who became a partner in the firm on 1 October 2006, read law at Cambridge University and attended law school at the College of Law, London. He qualified as a solicitor in 1997 and joined Wesley Gryk Solicitors in January 2000. His practice deals with the full range of immigration and nationality issues, with a particular emphasis on applications based on same sex relationships and also on asylum and human rights claims on the basis of sexual orientation. In his spare time, he works as a volunteer lawyer providing legal advice on these issues. He was heavily involved in the consultation process leading up to the introduction of the Civil Partnership Act 2004 and has given a number of lectures on the immigration aspects of this Act. He is the author of the immigration chapter of the Law Society Publication "Civil Partnership – the Law in Practice".

Tim Barnden

Tim Barnden read English at Cambridge University and converted to Law studying at the College of Law in London. He qualified as a solicitor in 1998 and has specialized in immigration and asylum work since then. He has also specialized in the crossover between immigration, asylum and mental health law. Since joining Wesley Gryk he has broadened his casework and now undertakes advice and representation across the full range of immigration and asylum law. He also continues to undertake and is known for training work, in particular for the Office of the Immigration Services Commissioner (OISC) and is a member of the Training Sub-Committee of the Immigration Law Practitioners Association (ILPA). In his spare time Tim is an enthusiastic member of the Paraiso School of Samba.

Carolyn Kerr

Having graduated with a degree in East Asian Studies from Leeds University, Carolyn Kerr worked for three years in local government on the Japanese island of Okinawa. She then returned to the United Kingdom and spent two years with International Alert, a peace-building non-governmental organisation, before joining Wesley Gryk as a paralegal in 2002. Carolyn subsequently completed her solicitors' training contract with Wesley Gryk and works now with the firm as a solicitor, having qualified in April 2007.

Katie Dilger

Katie Dilger read law at Oxford University. She trained as a solicitor at Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer where she qualified into the corporate department in 2004. Post-qualification, Katie worked on a range of corporate transactions, in particular mergers and acquisitions in the leisure sector. She also spent six months working as an in-house lawyer on secondment to a client. In autumn 2006 she left Freshfields to read an LLM in Public International Law at the London School of Economics. After completing her Masters Katie joined Wesley Gryk Solicitors in September 2007.