Blake Anderson Hanley: Music, Law, and Life After Emily Wickersham
Blake Anderson Hanley is a Florida attorney, singer-songwriter, composer, and producer best known in entertainment searches as the former husband of NCIS actress Emily Wickersham. His own career has moved through two very different worlds. He built the music project Ghost Lion, then became a lawyer in Florida. Current Florida Bar records list him as eligible to practice and connected with a West Palm Beach firm.
Hanley grew up in South Florida, spent years making music in Los Angeles, studied law, returned to Palm Beach County, and worked in public-interest legal service before moving into private practice.
South Florida Shaped His Music
Blake Anderson Hanley grew up around West Palm Beach, Florida. Ghost Lion’s official biography says the area’s mix of cultures shaped the sound and ideas behind his music. It also describes a city where communities could feel separated from one another.
That tension became part of his creative outlook. He wanted the music to bring different influences into the same space instead of keeping them apart.
Ghost Lion blends indie pop, electronic sounds, calypso, cumbia, South American folk, and other styles. The project uses acoustic guitar, synths, live drums, samples, and global rhythms. Hanley has been identified as its singer-songwriter, composer, and producer.
The sound is not easy to place inside one genre. That is part of its identity. The music reflects a South Florida background where Caribbean, Latin American, American, and coastal influences can exist close together.
Ghost Lion Became His Main Music Project
Before law became the stronger part of his public career, music took up years of his life.
Ghost Lion developed out of Hanley’s earlier work as a songwriter and performer. The group’s official site presents him as the creative center of the project. Its releases include Ballad of St. Panama and the album Nuclear Island.
Songs such as “Shot the Sun Down” brought the group wider attention in the indie music press. Atwood Magazine premiered that track in 2016 and described a sound that felt bright while carrying heavier ideas underneath.
The project also gave Hanley room to explore fear, belonging, culture, and social division. Those themes later connected with the kind of legal work he chose.
In 2019, Ghost Lion played SunFest in West Palm Beach. CBS12 covered the performance and noted that music was no longer his full-time job. By then, he had returned to Florida and was practicing law.
The Shift From Music to Law
Blake Anderson Hanley’s move into law was not a complete break from his creative life.
A 2019 CBS12 profile said he had been influenced by artists such as The Clash and Bob Marley, especially their social justice messages. That interest helped pull him toward public-interest work.
He attended Southwestern Law School in Los Angeles and completed his law degree in 2016. The Florida Bar lists his admission date as May 23, 2018.
That year marked a major change. After years tied to Los Angeles and music, he returned to Palm Beach County and began legal work in Florida.
The two careers are different, but they share some basic skills. Songwriting asks a person to listen, observe, and communicate. Legal work asks for the same things in a far more formal setting.
Working With the Legal Aid Society
Hanley’s early Florida legal career had a strong public-service focus.
CBS12 reported in 2019 that he was working as a domestic violence lawyer with the Legal Aid Society of Palm Beach County. The job placed him with clients facing serious legal and personal pressure.
Later public profiles connected him with the Legal Aid Society’s Heirs’ Property Project. Creative Waves Foundation identifies him as a lead attorney for that project and describes work involving property rights, probate estate administration, estate planning, and chain-of-title problems.
Heirs’ property can become hard to manage when a home or piece of land passes through a family without clear legal paperwork. Over time, several relatives may gain an interest in the same property. That can make it harder to sell, repair, finance, or protect the home.
The project focuses on helping families protect property and housing stability. It also connects property law with generational wealth in communities that have faced long periods of disadvantage.
That work gave Blake Anderson Hanley a legal identity far removed from entertainment coverage. It also created a public record that can be checked through professional and community groups.
His Current Legal Standing in Florida
The strongest current record of Hanley’s legal career comes from The Florida Bar.
Its directory lists him as a member in good standing and eligible to practice law. The profile connects him with West Palm Beach and lists sections tied to real property, probate, and trust law.
The current contact details point to The Grantham Law Firm & Standard Title in West Palm Beach. That is a newer stage than many older biographies show.
His work later moved from public-interest law into a private legal setting while staying close to property-related matters.
He is a licensed Florida attorney, not simply someone who once studied law.
Marriage to Emily Wickersham
Blake Anderson Hanley became much more searchable because of his marriage to Emily Wickersham.
Wickersham is best known for playing Ellie Bishop on NCIS. She joined the series in 2013 and remained with the show until 2021.
People has described Hanley as her former husband. Public entertainment records place their marriage from November 2010 until December 2018.
A 2015 Yahoo profile of Wickersham gave a small look at their life at the time. She described Hanley as her musician husband and said he was then in law school.
That detail captures the middle of his career change. He had not left music behind, but he was already building a second profession.
The marriage lasted about eight years. Reliable public sources confirm the divorce in 2018, but they do not provide a detailed, verified reason for the split.
Life After the Divorce
After the divorce, Wickersham stayed in the public eye through acting. Hanley moved in a different direction.
His strongest public trail after 2018 comes from law, community work, and Ghost Lion rather than celebrity interviews.
By 2019, he was back in South Florida, practicing law and performing at SunFest. Later community profiles placed him in property and estate-related legal work. The Florida Bar now shows his continued standing in the profession.
A Career Built Across Two Fields
Blake Anderson Hanley’s public story stands out because neither of his main careers looks like a short side project.
Music came first and lasted long enough to produce a clear body of work. Ghost Lion built a distinct sound, released original music, and played a major South Florida festival.
Law then became a serious second profession. He earned a law degree, joined the Florida Bar, worked with Legal Aid, handled community-focused property issues, and remained active in the profession.
The link between the two fields is easier to see than it first appears. His music often dealt with social division, belonging, and culture. His legal work later focused on people facing housing, property, and access-to-justice problems.
Both paths depend on communication. Both also require an ability to understand how people deal with conflict and change.
What Ghost Lion Adds to His Story
Ghost Lion remains important even though Hanley’s legal career is now easier to track through current professional records.
The project shows where many of his ideas began. Its official biography describes music as a way to imagine a more connected world. That aim fits the wider social themes he later pursued through law.
The band’s South Florida identity also matters. Hanley left the area for Los Angeles, but Palm Beach remained central to both his music and legal life.
When he returned, those two sides of his career met in the same place. In 2019, he could spend one part of his life helping legal clients and another preparing to perform at SunFest.
That is more revealing than treating him only as a former celebrity spouse.
Where His Career Stands Today
As of 2026, Blake Anderson Hanley remains a Florida lawyer in good standing. The Florida Bar lists him in West Palm Beach and connects his practice with real property, probate, and trust law.
Ghost Lion’s official website also remains online with the project’s biography, music, videos, and creative history.
His public profile is now split in a useful way. Music explains his earlier professional life and creative identity. Law explains where much of his recent work has gone.
The marriage to Wickersham remains part of his biography, but it is not the strongest measure of what he has done since.
Blake Anderson Hanley is best understood as a South Florida musician who built a second career in law and then made that legal work a major part of his adult life.
For another profile of a private professional known partly through a famous partner, read our Peter Buchignani story next on LakewoodScoop.co.uk.