By Grant McCool

NEW YORK, Jan 23 (Reuters) - Some $11 million invested by two businessmen with the firm of accused swindler Bernard Madoff just days before his arrest will be set aside from other money recovered for investors, their lawyer said on Friday.

The attorney had argued in filing two lawsuits that his clients' money in Madoff firm bank accounts should not be part of assets eventually distributed to investors by a court-appointed trustee overseeing the firm's liquidation.

"We are pleased that the bankruptcy court has stipulated that when the money comes to the trustee he will hold that until our claim is resolved," attorney Howard Kleinhendler said. "The money can be traced because it was deposited soon before Madoff's assets were frozen."

The amounts of money invested by Kleinhendler's clients are small compared with the billions of dollars that hedge funds and super-rich clients around the world are said to have lost.

Documents attached to the lawsuits identify two employees of New York-based Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC who handled the wire transfers faxed to the bank.

They are chief financial officer Frank DiPascali and Jodi Crupi, whose position with the firm has not been made public.

Lawyers for the two employees did not return phone calls.

A spokesman for the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, which has started an internal investigation of how regulators missed Madoff's purported $50 billion fraud over many years, declined comment on whether DiPascali or Crupi were being investigated in the SEC's civil case.