Brian Melendez, Tim Kelly Join Dykema

Dykema, aleading national law firm, announced today that Brian Melendez and Timothy Kelly have joined the firm, resident in the Minneapolis office. The two attorneys, both accomplished litigators, are the newest additions to Dykema’s Business Litigation group.

Joe Roach, who leads Dykema’s Minneapolis Office, says, “With the addition of Brian and Tim, our firm has landed two extraordinary litigators. Their ability to help business clients with their most sophisticated and challenging matters, coupled with their broad-based experience, make them valued additions to our Business Litigation practice and to our growing Minneapolis team.”

Peter Kellett, Dykema’s Chairman and CEO, adds, “Dykema has been privileged to serve many significant business clients—from medical device companies to energy facilities to financial institutions—in and around the Twin Cities for many years. In joining Dykema, Brian and Tim provide our clients proven experience and a strong connection to the Minneapolis/St. Paul business community in one of the firm’s strongest and best-known practice areas.”

About the Attorneys

Brian Melendez

Brian Melendez joins the firm as a member. He focuses his practice on business litigation, especially sophisticated commercial matters and consumer-finance litigation, and has represented a variety of clients—many of them Fortune 500 firms—in disputes ranging from breach-of-contract cases and business torts to consumer-credit class actions.

Melendez, who joins Dykema from the Minneapolis office of Faegre Baker Daniels, has defended clients in various consumer-law matters in over four dozen federal and state jurisdictions. Melendez has handled cases in the areas of consumer credit, consumer fraud, debt-collection practices and identity theft. Over the past decade, he has represented credit-card issuers in more than two hundred cases, including seven nationwide class actions and four federal appeals.

Melendez has served as president of the Minnesota State Bar Association and the Hennepin County Bar Association, and as national chair of the American Bar Association Young Lawyers Division. He is a former president of the Harvard Divinity School Alumni/ae Association, and currently serves as an elected director of the Harvard Alumni Association. Melendez has an A.B. cum laude from Harvard College, an M.T.S. from Harvard Divinity School and a J.D. cum laude from Harvard Law School.

Timothy D. Kelly

Timothy Kelly joins Dykema as senior counsel and will focus his practice on commercial litigation, arbitration and resolution of business disputes.

Kelly joins Dykema from private practice, having managed his own firm for 25 years. Prior to embarking upon his legal career, Kelly clerked  for U.S. District Court Judge Philip Neville, in the District of Minnesota. He then served a judicial clerkship for Warren E. Burger, Chief Justice of the United States.

Kelly, a U.S. Army Infantry veteran, served tours in both Vietnam and Cambodia. He has earned recognition as one of the Top 40  Business Litigation Attorneys in Minnesota in every year this list has been published, and was named Minneapolis Bet-the-Company Litigator of the Year by Best Lawyers® in 2011.

Kelly has a B.A. summa cum laude from the University of Minnesota and a J.D. magna cum laude from the University of Minnesota Law School, where he was a member of the Order of the Coif and research editor for the Minnesota Law Review.