Dr. Valentyn Gvozdiy

Valentyn Gvozdiy is a Founding Partner of GOLAW and an attorney at law. He co-founded the firm with Sergii Oberkovych in 2003 and led it as Managing Partner for more than twenty years. In that time GOLAW grew from a two-partner practice into a firm with offices in Kyiv and Berlin. It is recommended by The Legal 500 EMEA, Chambers Europe and IFLR1000, and the research “50 Leading Law Firms of Ukraine 2026” ranks it among the top four firms in the market. Sergii Oberkovych has held the role of Managing Partner since March 2026.

His practice covers complex matters in which the assets, reputation, public office and personal liability of business owners and executives are at stake: strategic leadership of the defence in criminal proceedings, litigation, restructuring, insolvency and non-performing loans. Valentyn acts for owners, executives and supervisory board members of Ukrainian and international companies at all stages of criminal and regulatory proceedings. He builds the defence in combination with preventive compliance. “Valentyn Gvozdiy brings authority in negotiations with state institutions,” a client told The Legal 500 EMEA 2026. His second area of work is corporate governance, risk management, anti-money laundering and government relations; his sector focus is energy, the defence industry, financial institutions, healthcare and manufacturing.

In bar self-governance, Valentyn has served since 2012 as Vice President of the Ukrainian National Bar Association and of the Bar Council of Ukraine, the bodies that unite all attorneys in the country. In this role he represents the Ukrainian Bar in its relations with the Council of Europe, the CCBE and the International Bar Association (IBA). In 2022–2024, as Vice-Chair of the Council of Europe Committee of Experts on the Protection of Lawyers (CJ-AV), he was one of the authors of the Council of Europe Convention for the Protection of the Profession of Lawyer (CETS No. 226) and its Explanatory Report. The Convention is the first legally binding international treaty on the protection of the legal profession. The Committee of Ministers adopted it on 12 March 2025, and Ukraine signed it on 9 March 2026.

From 2019 to 2026 he chaired the Supervisory Board of PJSC Ukrhydroenergo, Ukraine’s largest hydropower generating company, and its Audit Committee, and sat on the Risk Management Committee and the Nomination and Remuneration Committee. Since 2023 he has been a member of the Scientific and Strategic Advisory Board of the Institute for Climate Protection, Energy and Mobility (IKEM, Berlin), an independent research institute that studies the legal, economic and policy aspects of the energy transition, including the rebuilding of Ukraine’s energy sector.

Valentyn is a partner in GOLAW’s Berlin office and has been a member of the Berlin Bar (Rechtsanwaltskammer Berlin) since 2015. Through the firm’s German Desk he advises German and other European investors in Ukraine and Ukrainian companies in Germany.

Valentyn holds the honorary title of Honoured Lawyer of Ukraine (2017) and the degree of Candidate of Legal Sciences (PhD); his thesis examined the administrative-law status of the self-governing bodies of the legal profession. He completed two Harvard Business School programmes for board directors, the Corporate Director Certificate (2021) and the Advanced Corporate Director Seminar (2025), as well as the school’s Leading Change and Organizational Renewal programme (2026). He also holds the ICA Professional Postgraduate Diploma in Governance, Risk and Compliance (Alliance Manchester Business School, 2016) and a Master’s degree in Economics (Vadym Hetman Kyiv National Economic University, 2023).

Valentyn writes for Ukrainska Pravda, Mind and NV on the legal profession, the corporate governance of state-owned enterprises and taxation, co-authored the Chambers overview “Ukraine: An Overview” (2026) and lectures at the Higher School of Advocacy of the Ukrainian National Bar Association.

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