I have never tried it, still on my to-do-list
there is OBJ2P3D
http://www.ofp.imro.pl/program....&page=1
But it doesnt look promising in terms of it's vertex restriction, there is people that manage to successfully import p3ds from 3d-studio, so maybe exporting out of maya as a .3DS and importing into max and then using some kind of script will do. It's a bummer ,cuz i am so much better with maya than i am with max when it comes down to modelling. Let us know if the tool worked for you.