Major earthquakes of the recent past namely 2024 Noto Peninsula Earthquake, 2022 West Java earthquake and Michoacán earthquake, 2020 Aegean Sea earthquake, 2018 Sulawesi earthquake have had a detrimental impact on the port infrastructures. Quay walls are some of the most affected port facilities among these and it is essential to reduce the failure of quay walls. The lessons learned from these earthquakes have led to a shift from conventional seismic design to performance-based design which should be the basis of higher reliability of a quay wall design. In the present study, an attempt is made to design the quay walls using technical standards for Ports and Harbor Facilities in Japan and validate using a finite element software GeoStudio. A numerical model of the quay wall system under 2D plane strain idealization which includes backfill, subsoil and the quay wall is constructed. Under the applied seismic load, the quay wall has a resultant displacement and rotation depending on the properties of subsoil and backfill soil and the seismic force. The dynamic analysis helps in simulating pore pressure excitation to evaluate the liquefaction potential, and hence to assess the behavior of the foundation soil and backfill soil during shaking. Further, the deformation characteristics of quay wall such as magnitudes of sliding, rotation and settlement are assessed at different levels of shaking for different embedment positions of quay wall. It is inferred that the numerical model validates the design of quay walls in accordance with technical standards for Ports and Harbor Facilities in Japan.