Speaker details

Biography

James Castello recently became a full-time independent arbitrator as a member of Arbitration Chambers, which has offices in New York, London, Hong Kong & Singapore. Previously, he spent 37 years in legal practice, much of that time based in Europe, focused exclusively on international commercial and investor-State arbitration. During the last 15 years, he was a founding partner of King & Spalding’s Paris office. James has served as a U.S. delegate to UNCITRAL’s Arbitration Working Group II for more than two decades and to Working Group III (ISDS reform) since its inception. James also serves as Deputy Chair of the LCIA’s Board of Directors and sits on the International Advisory Board of Vienna’s International Arbitral Centre. A Vice-Chair of the Institute for Transnational Arbitration, James has been a founding member of its Rule of Law Task Force. After obtaining degrees in history and law and economics from Yale and Berkeley, respectively, James began his legal career with clerkships at the U.S. Supreme Court and the Iran-U.S. Claims Tribunal. According to Chambers Global, he is “praised by market commentators as an ‘absolutely open, thorough, fantastic lawyer.’” He is admitted to practice in New York, Washington, D.C., and Paris.