James Fallows Tierney joined the Chicago-Kent College of Law faculty in Fall 2023. He teaches courses in business law. Tierney has also been an assistant professor at the University of Nebraska College of Law and a lecturer at Rutgers Law School.

Tierney’s research focuses on how law shapes the way that ordinary people and financial markets interact with each other. He is an expert in the regulation of broker-dealers, investment advisers, and self-regulatory organizations such as stock exchanges. His research has been published or is forthcoming in journals such as the Duke Law Journal, Nebraska Law Review, University of Chicago Law Review, University of Pennsylvania Journal of Business Law, and Yale Law Journal Forum. His article, “Investment Games,” about the regulation of zero-commission stock trading and gamified investment apps, was selected for the Harvard/Yale/Stanford Junior Faculty Forum in 2022.

Before joining academia, he practiced in the United States Securities and Exchange Commission’s Office of the General Counsel for five years, had a regulatory and appellate practice at Mayer Brown LLP in Washington, D.C., and clerked for Judge Mary M. Schroeder of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. He has degrees from Brown University and the University of Chicago. Outside work, he has two kids and a dog, and is a board member of the nonprofit DSA Fund.