After 56 years in the practice of law, Jim DeNardo, the longest-running member of our management committee and long-time partner at McKenna Storer, is retiring.
Jim, a Chicagoan, attended DePaul University as an undergraduate and graduated from the DePaul University College of Law. He spent his first year after law school as a law clerk to Justice Daniel J. McNamara of the Illinois Appellate Court.
Jim then served in Vietnam as a Captain in the United States Army Judge Advocate General’s Corps. During his tour in Vietnam, in addition to his court-martial work and as a foreign claims officer, he was tasked with teaching soldiers about the Geneva Conventions after the My Lai incident. He finished his career in the military stationed in West Germany.
One of the above pictures was taken when he was visiting local villages in Vietnam and drinking rice wine with the villagers, who enjoyed meeting the young American attorney and showing him around their village and introducing him to their culture.
After the Army, Jim returned to Chicago and became an attorney at McKenna Storer, where he has remained for 47 years.
Jim’s practice at McKenna Storer has been primarily employment law and workplace issues, such as discrimination in the employment setting, equal employment litigation and public accommodations and commercial facilities litigation. While enjoying employment law, Jim is also a talented appellate attorney, and has appeared extensively in appellate courts at the state and federal levels including the Illinois Supreme Court and Appellate Court as well as before the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit.
Undoubtedly, retirement will not be boring. Jim has already embarked on a path of further college study at Northwestern University into the area of gender studies and has become an authority on the rise toward gender equality in the U.S.
Jim is married to Mary Lou DeNardo, a devoted father to two children and grandfather to two grandchildren.
