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well...
as a practicing jew, i believe that the "pharisees" of the NT are an umbrella term for what *became* normative, rabbinic judaism. however, the problem is that in 1st century judea, there was a religious "establishment", namely the Temple, which had central authority and a priestly caste - who were, effectively the people referred to as the "sadducees". the "supreme court" of judaism, the sanhedrin, was in the Temple complex. to get in the sanhedrin (a body of 70 sages) you had to be a sage, not a priest, although some were both. and the sanhedrin had executive and legislative power - but was also susceptible to roman and priestly (ie sadducee) political pressure. eventually, when the Temple was destroyed by the romans after an abortive uprising in 70CE (AD) the authority of the priestly caste was destroyed with it. the alternative was the "roots" movement of the synagogues that sprang up, starting in yavneh under r. yohanan ben zakkai, who escaped from the sack of jerusalem. so, insofar as pre-destruction, there was a group which seemed to correspond more or less to the "pharisaic party", it isn't a clear group of people from a historical or judaic PoV, let alone a "sect", because what is now normative judaism came out of the rabbinic tradition. the essenes, sicarii, gnostics, apocalyptics and those qumran buggers - not to mention the proto-christians - are the ones more properly referred to as sects. in terms of what sjr says i suppose that could refer to whoever in the town or village knew the most law, but it was nothing like being a bishop, more like being the village elder/magistrate. however, you can see how such a person might behave in a manner which might be "pharisaic" in the NT, 'whited sepulchre' sense, and therefore incur the displeasure of a radical populist preacher like jesus - and he'd be right, too.
b'shalom
bananabrain
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