Charles John O’Byrne is Executive Vice President for Policy at Related Companies where he serves in a leadership role on government affairs on the federal, state and local levels; labor issues, litigation matters, and questions of strategy on multiple projects within the Related portfolio. He also serves on the management team of EnergyRe, an energy company focused on transmission line development.
Charles is a native of Manhattan and currently resides in the borough as well. Trained as an attorney, his career prior to joining Related involved varied experiences in government, religion, academia and business. A former Jesuit priest, he worked at Columbia and Harvard universities as a chaplain and teaching fellow. He also served as Associate General Counsel for the Archdiocese of New York. During his time in ministry he served as an attorney with the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights on the prosecution of those responsible for the assassination of Jesuit faculty members at the UCA in San Salvador in 1989.
Charles has decades of experience in politics and government as a speech writer, communications director and chief of staff.
He spent more than five years in state service acting as Chief of Staff to the Senate Minority Leader, Chief of Staff to the Lieutenant Governor and Secretary to former Governor David A. Paterson. The constitutional office of Secretary to the Governor is the highest appointed office in the state’s executive branch.
Long active in charitable and philanthropic works, O’Byrne presently serves on the boards of Citizens Union, the Steering Committee of ABNY, as a Trustee of the Citizens Budget Commission, Chair of the Washington Ireland Program, and as a member of the Board of Directors for the Robert G. Wilmers Integrity Prize. He is a past president of the Columbia College Alumni Association, a co-founder of the Thomas Merton Lecture at Columbia, a former trustee of the Kennedy Smith Foundation and former Vice Chair of VSA Arts, an affiliate of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts providing artistic opportunities for people with disabilities.
Charles holds his BA summa cum laude from Columbia College, where he majored in history and studied Chinese philosophy. He received his Juris Doctor degree from the Columbia University School of Law where he was named to the International Fellows Program. He holds a Masters in Divinity with Distinction and an S.T.L., in Theology from the Weston Jesuit School of Theology.
