vertical align and valign not working on table!

To affect cells in the way you want, you do need to set the alignment at the cell level. Since you don't want to do this for each individual one, you need to think about adding a css/style section to your page. Here's a sample definition for what you need - this is normally in the head section or a separate file, but you could even have this just before the "< table" tag.

<style type="text/css">
td {
  vertical-align: top;
}
</style>

Here is a basic table example with TH and TD tags where the content is set to "vertical-align:top".

Demo: http://jsfiddle.net/HAQ3s/472/

th, td {
    vertical-align: top;
}

<table>
    <tr>
        <th>A<br /><br /></th>
        <th>B</th>
        <th>C</th>
    </tr>
    <tr>
        <td>1<br /><br /></td>
        <td>2</td>
        <td>3</td>
    </tr>
</table>

valign should work no matter what if all settings that we see here are those that are actually used.

Global CSS settings

But I suspect a different gunman here. Did you check your global CSS file what it defines for TH elements? Maybe that's what's giving you headaches.