Frank Galbally
Francis Eugene Joseph "Frank" Galbally was an Australian criminal defence lawyer.
Early life and education
Galbally was born in 1922, the eighth of nine children of William Galbally and Eileen Cummins, who both came from Gippsland farming families. He was educated at St Patrick's College, East Melbourne. After leaving school at the age of 16, he initially trained to be a priest at Corpus Christi College, Melbourne from 1939 but after the events of Pearl Harbor joined the Navy.While he was in the Navy, Galbally played Australian rules football in the Victorian Football League with Jock McHale's Collingwood. He made just six appearances, all in the 1942 VFL season. A leg injury sustained with an axe while cutting wood left him in hospital for two months and ended his career.
He then studied law at the University of Melbourne, where he resided at Newman College. The Frank Galbally Memorial Prize for International Criminal Law at the university is named in his honour. In 1948, he joined his brother John's legal firm. He married Bernadette O'Bryan, daughter of Justice Sir Norman O'Bryan and they had eight children.
Career
Galbally was one of the first solicitors to practice as a trial advocate without joining the Victorian Bar. He practiced predominantly in criminal law, but also appeared in coronial inquests, government inquiries, personal injury and medical negligence matters. He defended his first murder case in 1950 and by the end of his career had achieved an acquittal rate of 80 to 90 per cent.In 1965, Galbally established the law firm of Galbally and O'Bryan with his brother-in-law Peter, a leading personal injury lawyer, after his brother Jack left his firm to pursue a career in state politics. He later served as a member of the Council of the Law Institute of Victoria and the Solicitors' Board of Victoria.
He oversaw the preparation of a report commissioned by the Australian Government, which recommended the changing of the policy of assimilation to one of multiculturalism. He was also chairman of the Australian Institute of Multicultural Affairs and the Special Broadcasting Service. He was decorated several times by the Italian Government for his services to the Italian community in Australia.
In the 1960s the psychiatrist John Diamond was associated with Galbally. Diamond appeared as a medical witness in a number of homicide cases in which he successfully used novel approaches to argue the defendant's mental state as a mitigating circumstance.