Gryshin was born in Tambov into a noble family. He studied at Voronezh Mikhailovsky Cadet Corps, then in 1902, he graduated from Mikhailovsky Artillery School. During the Russo-Japanese War, he took part in the battle of Liaoyang (1904). A participant of World War I. In 1917, Grishyn sympathized with the Socialist Revolutionary Party but remained non-partisan. After the October coup of 1917, he resisted the Bolshevization of the army, was arrested and fled from prison.

He joined the Volunteer Army and was sent by General Mikhail Alekseyev to Siberia to form a conspiratorial network of officers’ combat groups. Grishyn took on the pseudonym Almazov. Upon learning of the uprising of the Czechoslovak Legion, on May 27, 1918, he ordered the underground fighters to raise the uprising too. Since June 1918, he held the post of the Commander of the West Siberian Army. After the Provisional Siberian Government took over the power, Grishyn-Almazov became the Head of the War Ministry. He was promoted to Major General in 1918. As a supporter of military dictatorship, he disagreed with the moderate socialists, members of the government, then he was dismissed. Grishyn-Almazov was involved in the harsh suppression of the Slavgorod uprising in September 1918.

At the end of 1918, he arrived in the South and joined the Volunteer Army. In December 1918, he led a volunteer detachment, and with the help of the allies, they knocked Symon Petliura’s troops from Odessa. During the period from December 1918 to March 1919, Grishyn-Almazov was acting military governor of Odessa, organized the defense of the city from Soviet troops. During his period in Odessa, he was involved in mass extrajudicial reprisals in the city. At the end of March, he was removed from office by the French military. He continued to control part of the city as the Head of a detachment within the Volunteer Army. In April, as the Bolsheviks were approaching Odessa Grishyn-Almazov left the city.

As Anton Denikin’s personal emissary he was sent to Aleksander Kolchak. On May 5, 1919, Soviet destroyer Karl Liebknecht intercepted the steamer Leila, on which the delegation was crossing the Caspian Sea. Unwilling to surrender, Grishyn-Almazov shot himself.