Damariscotta attorney Jim Gallagher sits in a conference room in his Main Street law office. Officially retired after a near 50-career, Gallagher still works one or two days a week as needed for a few remaining long-term clients. (Sherwood Olin photo)
Jim Gallagher is in a good place in life.
Now 75, leaning into retirement, the avuncular Damariscotta attorney is in good health. He lives in the house he grew up in on the Bristol Road in Damariscotta, which he shares with Barbara, his beloved wife of 55 years, and their youngest son, J.J.
Three of the Gallagher’s four children live nearby, and the children have collectively blessed the couple with eight grandchildren. “Life is good” Gallagher said, acknowledging he put the time in earlier in his career to reap the benefits now.
“For years, 15 years I don’t think I saw my wife,” Gallagher said. “It’s amazing we have four kids. I was working. I’d go to work at seven in the morning, get home, 10:30, 11 o’clock at night. I’d do that week after week after week. … You got to do it, but it was worth it in the long run. It was worth it and whatever time I’ve got left, I want to make sure that I spend it with the ones I love and my kids and my grandkids.”
Although officially retired, Gallagher is still nominally employed at Gallagher, Villeneuve and DeGeer, the Damariscotta law firm that evolved out of the solo practice Gallagher first opened in his garage on Bristol Road in 1979.
At the time, Gallagher was barely 30 years old, but an unsuccessful run for the District Attorney’s office in 1978 convinced him it was time to make his own way. He was already employed in the office as a deputy DA, but he found the prospect of staying and working for the man he narrowly lost the election to, future Superior Court Justice John Atwood, unappealing.
It was nothing personal, Gallagher said, hastening to add Atwood was a gracious winner and would have been happy to have Gallagher stay on.
Within a year of opening his own practice, Gallagher was having his future offices built at 181 Main St. It wasn’t so much that he was blessed with a rush of early business, Gallagher said, as much as he was blessed with some much appreciated, and vital, support.
“First National Bank was very generous, okay?” Gallagher said. “And building costs weren’t what they are now. And my mom owned the land.”
In 1987 Gallagher formed a general practice partnership with Gordon Stein, which lasted until Stein’s unexpected passing in 2004. Shortly afterward, Gallagher’s daughter Jenny Gallagher Villeneuve joined her father’s practice. In 2016 Villeneuve orchestrated the merger of Gallagher and Stein with the law office of Marcia E. DeGeer to form Gallagher, Villeneuve and DeGeer, PLLC.
When he was more assiduously practicing law, Gallagher said his favorite area of law was real estate, specifically boundary disputes. He liked the detailed nature of the work and he had a professional ace in the hole, South Bristol surveyor Rory Craib.
Craib’s expertise and professional reputation were such that his association alone added significant gravitas to Gallagher’s position.
“We formed quite a team,” Gallagher said. “He’s an excellent, excellent surveyor. In fact, after we won enough cases, both in the law court and in the district and superior courts, we’d get into an argument with somebody and the other attorney would say, ‘Who’s your surveyor?’ and I’d say ‘Rory Craib’ and they’d just give up.”
During his career Gallagher has served on many boards and nonprofits: the Lincoln Academy Board of Trustees, Mobius Inc. Board of Directors, and the Damariscotta Region Information Bureau, among others but one of his most public-facing roles was serving as a public meeting moderator.
It was fellow Damariscotta attorney and future Lincoln County District Court Judge Michael Wescott who first recruited Gallagher to the podium. Westcott himself moderated the Damariscotta town meeting for a number of years before he was elevated to the bench. On a night when he had a scheduling conflict, he asked Gallagher to fill in him.
“He said, ‘Would you do me a favor? Would you moderate the town meeting tonight? I don’t have time to do it.’” said Gallagher. “I said, ‘Well, I guess so.’ So, for the next 30 years, it just kept going and going and going.”
Gallagher still serves as a moderator when asked, although he cites South Bristol as his only regular client. He moderated Damariscotta’s town meetings for three decades before a parting of the ways a couple years ago with a previous town manager over electronic voting machines.
“The town manager and I got into a disagreement over the use of the electronic voting machines,” Gallagher said. “You press a one or two for yes or no; I thought it stifled the interest of the public to talk about whatever the article was about, to criticize it, or whatever, because they all anonymously just hit yes or no and it come up on the screen. I guess we came to the point where the town manager says, ‘You know, I don’t have to ask you to be the town moderator.’ And I said, ‘I don’t have to be the town moderator.’”
Wescott was also instrumental getting Gallagher to run for Lincoln County Board of Commissioners, which he did in 1980, beginning what turned out to be a 20-year tenure on the board. Gallagher said he enjoyed serving and he learned a lot in office.
A lifelong conservative Republican, Gallagher said local offices like county and municipal offices are largely apolitical in function. Individual office holders may have whatever political opinions, but public service on the local level is less political theory and more about hands-on problem solving, Gallagher said.
“I had to run as a Republican or a Democrat, because that’s the way it is, but I always felt it was public service,” he said. “And I learned a hell of a lot, not just about budgeting and lot of things like that, but you learn a lot about people, and you learn about what’s important to different towns.”
Although he enjoyed serving, Gallagher said he was happy enough to complete his final term and leave office in 2000. No, he said, he never considered running for a different public office.
“The selectmen have the hardest job going,” he said. “I think they’re the most under-appreciated group of people that exist. There’s no thanks. It’s just grief. Everybody’s unhappy. Their taxes are too high. Their streets are being torn up. The sewer isn’t working. We don’t want this sewer, or we don’t want the water company putting water lines into our subdivision. You can go on and on and on and no, no, no, no.”
Currently Gallagher still works one or two days a week and says he unofficially serves as the firm’s institutional memory.
“The firm is doing well, and they don’t need me around,” he said. “I’m here if they need me. I’ve got some old clients that I’ve represented for 48 or 50 years, and you know, they won’t let go, and I won’t let go.”
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