UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF NEW YORK

The 'United States District Court for the Southern District of New York' (S.D.N.Y.) is the federal district court whose jurisdiction comprises the following counties: New York (Manhattan), Bronx, Westchester, Putnam, Rockland, Orange, Dutchess, and Sullivan. The 'United States Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York' represents the United States in civil and criminal litigation in the court. The current United States Attorney for the district is Michael J. Garcia.
The court shares geographic jurisdiction over New York City with the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York, which manages Kings (Brooklyn), Queens, and Richmond (Staten Island) counties, along with Nassau and Suffolk on Long Island.
The Southern District is one of the most influential and active federal district courts in the United States, largely because of its jurisdiction over New York's major financial centers. When Rudolph Giuliani worked as a federal prosecutor in this district, his unusually aggressive style of litigation combined with the overall power of this district caused legal commentators to joke that S.D.N.Y. stood for the "Sovereign District of New York."
The Southern District of New York was subdivided out of the U.S. District Court for the District of New York on April 9, 1814 along with the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York.

Contents

Judges

References

Judges

The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York has 28 authorized judgeships, filled by judges appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate. Two seats are vacant due to the retirement of Chief Judge Michael B. Mukasey and the death of Judge Richard Conway Casey. Seventeen judges who have taken senior status are eligible to continue hearing cases. As of August 1, 2006, the Chief Judge of the District is Judge Kimba M. Wood, succeeding Judge Mukasey, who has returned to private practice.
The District Judges (active and senior) sitting as of 2007 are:

'Name'	'Appointed'	'Appointed by'
Chief Judge Kimba Wood	1987		Ronald Reagan
District Judge Charles L. Brieant	1971		Richard Nixon
Senior District Judge Thomas P. Griesa	1972		Richard Nixon
Senior District Judge Robert L. Carter	1972		Richard Nixon
Senior District Judge Kevin Thomas Duffy	1972		Richard Nixon
Senior District Judge Richard Owen	1973		Richard Nixon
Senior District Judge William C. Conner	1973		Richard Nixon
Senior District Judge Charles S. Haight, Jr.	1976		Gerald Ford
Senior District Judge Leonard B. Sand	1978		Jimmy Carter
Senior District Judge Robert W. Sweet	1978		Jimmy Carter
Senior District Judge John E. Sprizzo	1981		Ronald Reagan
Senior District Judge John F. Keenan	1983		Ronald Reagan
Senior District Judge Shirley Wohl Kram	1983		Ronald Reagan
Senior District Judge Peter K. Leisure	1984		Ronald Reagan
Senior District Judge Louis L. Stanton	1985		Ronald Reagan
Senior District Judge Miriam Goldman Cedarbaum	1986		Ronald Reagan
Senior District Judge Robert P. Patterson, Jr.	1988		Ronald Reagan
Senior District Judge Lawrence M. McKenna	1990		George H.W. Bush
District Judge Loretta A. Preska	1992		George H.W. Bush
Senior District Judge Harold Baer, Jr.	1994		Bill Clinton
District Judge Deborah A. Batts	1994		Bill Clinton
District Judge John G. Koeltl	1994		Bill Clinton
District Judge Denny Chin	1994		Bill Clinton
District Judge Denise Cote	1994		Bill Clinton
District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan	1994		Bill Clinton
District Judge Shira A. Scheindlin	1994		Bill Clinton
District Judge Sidney H. Stein	1995		Bill Clinton
District Judge Barbara S. Jones	1995		Bill Clinton
District Judge Jed S. Rakoff	1996		Bill Clinton
District Judge Alvin Hellerstein	1998		Bill Clinton
District Judge Colleen McMahon	1998		Bill Clinton
District Judge Richard M. Berman	1998		Bill Clinton
District Judge William H. Pauley	1998		Bill Clinton
District Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald	1999		Bill Clinton
District Judge Victor Marrero	1999		Bill Clinton
District Judge Gerard E. Lynch	2000		Bill Clinton
District Judge Laura Taylor Swain	2000		Bill Clinton
District Judge George B. Daniels	2000		Bill Clinton
District Judge P. Kevin Castel	2003		George W. Bush
District Judge Stephen C. Robinson	2003		George W. Bush
District Judge Richard J. Holwell	2003		George W. Bush
District Judge Kenneth M. Karas	2004		George W. Bush
District Judge Paul A. Crotty	2005		George W. Bush

'Former Judges'

★ William Peter Van Ness (1814-1826)

★ Samuel Rossiter Betts (1826-1867)

★ Samuel Blatchford (1867-1878)

★ William Gardner Choate (1878-1881)

★ Addison Brown (1881-1901)

★ George Bethune Adams (1901-1911)

★ George Chandler Holt (1903-1914)

★ Charles Merrill Hough (1906-1916)

★ Learned Hand (1909-1924)

★ Julius Marshuetz Mayer (1912-1921)

★ Augustus Noble Hand (1914-1927)

★ Martin Thomas Manton (1916-1918)

★ John C. Knox (1918-1966)

★ Henry Warren Goddard (1923-1955)

★ Francis Asbury Winslow (1923-1929)

★ William Bondy (1923-1964)

★ Thomas Day Thacher (1925-1930)

★ Frank Joseph Coleman (1927-1934)

★ John Monroe Woolsey (1929-1945)

★ Francis Gordon Caffrey (1929-1951)

★ Alfred Conkling Coxe, Jr. (1929-1957)

★ Robert Porter Patterson, Sr. (1930-1939)

★ G. Murray Hulbert (1934-1950)

★ Vincent L. Leibell (1936-1968)

★ John William Clancy (1936-1969)

★ Samuel Mandelbaum (1936-1946)

★ Edward A. Conger (1938-1963)

★ John Bright (1941-1948)

★ Simon Hirsch Rifkind (1941-1950)

★ Harold Raymond Medina (1947-1951)

★ Sylvester J. Ryan (1947-1981)

★ Samuel Hamilton Kaufman (1948-1960)

★ Irving Robert Kaufman (1949-1961)

★ John F. X. McGohey (1949-1972)

★ Gregory Francis Noonan (1949-1964)

★ Sidney Sugarman (1949-1974)

★ Edward Weinfeld (1950-1988)

★ Thomas Francis Murphy (1951-1995)

★ Edward Jordan Dimock (1951-1986)

★ David Norton Edelstein (1951-2000)

★ Archie Owen Dawson (1954-1964)

★ Lawrence Edward Walsh (1954-1957)

★ Alexander Bicks (1954-1963)

★ Edmund Louis Palmieri (1954-1989)

★ William Bernard Herlands (1955-1969)

★ John M. Cashin (1955-1970)

★ Richard Harrington Levet (1956-1976)

★ Frederick van Pelt Bryan (1956-1978)

★ Lloyd Francis MacMahon (1959-1989)

★ Charles Miller Metzner (1959-present)

★ Thomas Francis Croake (1961-1978)

★ Dudley Baldwin Bonsal (1961-1995)

★ Irving Ben Cooper (1961-1996)

★ Wilfred Feinberg (1961-1966)

★ Harold R. Tyler, Jr. (1962-1975)

★ Edward Cochrane McLean (1962-1972)

★ Inzer Bass Wyatt (1962-1990)

★ John Matthew Cannella (1963-1996)

★ Charles Henry Tenney (1963-1994)

★ Marvin E. Frankel (1965-1978)

★ Walter Roe Mansfield (1966-1971)

★ Constance Baker Motley (1966-2005)

★ Milton Pollack (1967-2004)

★ Morris E. Lasker (1968-present)

★ Murray Irwin Gurfein (1971-1974)

★ Lawrence Warren Pierce (1971-1981)

★ Arnold Bauman (1971-1974)

★ Lee Parsons Gagliardi (1971-1998)

★ (Percy) Whitman Knapp (1972-2004)

★ Charles E. Stewart, Jr. (1972-1994)

★ Robert Joseph Ward (1972-2003)

★ Henry Frederick Werker (1974-1984)

★ Gerard Louis Goettel (1976-present)

★ Vincent Lyons Broderick (1976-1995)

★ Pierre Nelson Leval (1977-1993)

★ Mary Johnson Lowe (1978-1999)

★ Abraham David Sofaer (1979-1985)

★ John M. Walker, Jr. (1985-1989)

★ Richard Joseph Daronco (1987-1988)

★ Kenneth Conboy (1987-1993)

★ Richard Conway Casey (1987-2007)

★ Michael B. Mukasey (1987-2006)

★ John S. Martin, Jr. (1990-2003)

★ Louis J. Freeh (1991-1993)

★ Sonia Sotomayor (1992-1998)

★ Allen G. Schwartz (1993-2003)

★ Barrington Daniels Parker, Jr. (1994-2001)
(28 authorized judgeships)

References

★ Official website for the U.S. District Court for the SDNY

★ Official website for the U.S. Attorney's Office for the SDNY