Michael Bachrach has been a practicing criminal defense attorney since 2001 with a focus on the trial and appellate defense of indigent defendants, including those charged with death penalty and national security offenses, throughout his career. He received his B.A. from Sarah Lawrence College, his J.D. from the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, and studied international law at Oxford University. Along with his co-counsel, he tried to a life verdict the Ronald Mallay authorized death penalty case, and in a separate case won 284 counts of acquittal for Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani after convincing the Attorney General not to seek the death penalty. Other high-profile clients have included Vincent Basciano, NYS Assemblyman William Boyland, Mustafa Kamel Mustafa (a/k/a Abu Hamza al-Masri), and Jack Teixeira. Michael is proud to have convinced the Attorney General not to seek the death penalty for dozens of other clients thereby allowing those defendants to resolve their cases without even the need for a trial, and won a first-of-its-kind FISA reversal in U.S. v. Agron Hasbajrami.
Michael is a past-President of the New York Criminal Bar Association and has served as a faculty member of The Bryan R. Shechmeister Death Penalty College. In 2012, the New York State Bar Association presented Michael with the David S. Michaels Memorial Award for Courageous Efforts in Promoting Integrity in the Criminal Justice System, in 2015 Michael became a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation, and in 2024 Michael became a member of the Federal Death Penalty Resource Counsel Project.