Daniel S. Alter

Daniel S. Alter is a partner at Abrams Fensterman LLP, working out of the firm’s White Plains office. Mr. Alter combines expertise in federal and state appellate litigation, complex civil cases, cutting-edge regulatory matters, and the fast-growing world of Fintech. Mr. Alter is known for his creative approaches to problem solving and for successfully guiding his clients through varied and complicated legal challenges.

In his over thirty years as a practicing lawyer, Mr. Alter has had extensive experience in both the public and private sectors. After clerking for two judges on the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, he served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York (as Acting and Deputy Chief of the Civil Division), Senior Advisor and Special Counsel to the New York State Attorney General, and General Counsel to the New York State Department of Financial Services (DFS). While at DFS, he was one of the primary architects of the agency’s national pathbreaking regulatory program for cryptocurrencies, digital assets, and blockchain-based financial institutions. From 2015 to 2017 Mr. Alter was an adjunct professor and senior fellow at New York University Law School where he was a resident member of the law faculty research and teaching program in corporate compliance and enforcement, focusing on financial services regulation. In 2014, Mr. Alter was selected by the New York State Commission on Judicial Nomination as one of seven candidates statewide for a seat on New York’s highest court, the Court of Appeals.

On the private side, Mr. Alter has been a litigation partner at a global firm and at a nationally ranked boutique financial services firm. He has litigated cases at every level of the federal and New York State courts, involving important issues of constitutional, commercial, communications, banking, trusts and estates, and bankruptcy law. He is widely published on topics involving cryptocurrency and digital assets, and he has taught regulatory compliance as an adjunct professor at New York University Law School. He has also served as the first general counsel to the first Fintech-based trust company ever chartered in the United States.

Mr. Alter received his J.D. from Yale Law School, where he was a Coker Fellow in Constitutional Law, and his B.A. from Columbia University, Summa Cum Laude and Phi Beta Kappa.