Handling session timeout in ajax calls

You could write a custom [Authorize] attribute which would return JSON instead of throwing a 401 exception in case of unauthorized access which would allow client scripts to handle the scenario gracefully:

[AttributeUsage(AttributeTargets.Class | AttributeTargets.Method)]
public class MyAuthorizeAttribute : AuthorizeAttribute
{
    protected override void HandleUnauthorizedRequest(AuthorizationContext filterContext)
    {
        if (filterContext.HttpContext.Request.IsAjaxRequest())
        {
            filterContext.Result = new JsonResult
            {
                Data = new 
                { 
                    // put whatever data you want which will be sent
                    // to the client
                    message = "sorry, but you were logged out" 
                },
                JsonRequestBehavior = JsonRequestBehavior.AllowGet
            };
        }
        else
        {
            base.HandleUnauthorizedRequest(filterContext);
        }
    }
}

then decorate your controller/actions with it and on the client:

$.get('@Url.Action("SomeAction")', function (result) {
    if (result.message) {
        alert(result.message);
    } else {
        // do whatever you were doing before with the results
    }
});