Vertically align text within div element

Question

I know this question has been asked to death but nothing through searching has worked for me.

You know the deal, I have a div element that I need to vertically align text in but nothing has worked (position:absolute;top:50%;margin-top:-x;display:table-cell;vertical-align:middle;etc., etc.)

Here is what I am working with (sorry for the inline CSS). Anyway, the I would use line-height but the text can be one or two lines. It should vertical align with the image which is always max-height of 30px (30x50).

 <div style="margin:0 0 10px 0;padding:10px;border:2px solid #606060;background-color:#2b2b2b;-webkit-border-radius:8px;-moz-border-radius:8px;border-radius:8px;">
 <div style="float:left;width:55px;height:40px;">
 <a href="link"><img style="max-width:50px;border:1px solid #ffb92c;" src="image.jpg" alt="" /></a>
 </div>
 <div style="float:right;width:155px;font-size:0.7em;height:40px;">
 <a href="link">This is the text to vertically align</a>
 </div>
 </div>

Answer 1

One other thing you can do. If it's only one line of text in the div you can use line-height

example

div {
    line-height:40px;
}