Nyoki Reynolds

Nyoki T. Reynolds is a partner in the Orange County office of Messner Reeves LLP. With more than 20 years of legal experience, her practice focuses on labor and employment, complex commercial litigation, fraud and financial-misconduct claims, workplace investigations, and Title IX and institutional compliance. Her practice also includes real estate and lending litigation, probate and trust litigation, and matters involving banking and financial institutions. 

Nyoki represents employers and employees in matters involving discrimination, harassment, retaliation, wrongful termination, wage-and-hour claims, workplace investigations, and complex business disputes. She has experience handling matters under the California Fair Employment and Housing Act, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act, the California Family Rights Act, and the California Labor Code. She guides clients through all phases of litigation, from administrative proceedings before the California Civil Rights Department and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission through discovery, dispositive motions, and trial preparation.

Having practiced on both the plaintiff and defense sides of employment law, Nyoki brings a comprehensive perspective to workplace disputes. She has conducted and supervised more than 300 workplace investigations involving allegations of discrimination, harassment, and retaliation based on race, sex, age, disability, and other protected categories. She also advises clients on how to structure, conduct, and defend investigations, and prepares witnesses for investigator interviews.

Nyoki previously served as Assistant Vice Chancellor and Title IX and Equal Employment Opportunity Officer at the University of California, San Francisco. In that role, she directed the university’s response to discrimination, harassment, and retaliation complaints; supervised a 14-person investigations team handling more than 300 complaints annually; and served as the university’s primary liaison to the federal Office for Civil Rights. Her experience provides firsthand insight into how large institutions evaluate risk, document, investigate, and resolve workplace and institutional complaints.

Nyoki’s broader litigation experience includes complex commercial disputes, fraud claims, financial misconduct, real estate and lending disputes, fiduciary disputes, elder abuse claims, and trust litigation. Her representative matters include obtaining a court-entered judgment for a nonprofit organization and its founder in fraud and breach-of-contract litigation and securing a mediated resolution that removed a disputed lien, prevented foreclosure, and preserved a homeowner’s property interest.

Nyoki earned her J.D. from the University of California, Berkeley School of Law, where she received an American Jurisprudence Award in Constitutional Law. She earned her B.S. in Business Administration from the University of Phoenix. She is admitted to practice in California and before the U.S. District Courts for the Northern and Eastern Districts of California.

She is a member of the State Bar of California, the Association of Workplace Investigators, the Bar Association of San Francisco, and the Bar Association of Alameda County. Her pro bono experience includes civil rights matters involving race discrimination, unlawful arrest, and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.