John Gleeson

John Gleeson is a partner at Debevoise and Plimpton LLP in New York, where he has practiced since 2016. From 1994 to 2016 Judge Gleeson served as a United States District Court Judge for the Eastern District of New York. From 1985 to 1994, Judge Gleeson served as an Assistant United States Attorney in the United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York. Judge Gleeson served as a law clerk for Judge Boyce Martin on the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. Judge Gleeson received his J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law in 1980 and his B.A. from Georgetown University in 1975. John Gleeson was appointed as a United States District Judge on September 28,1994, and entered on duty on October 24, 1994. Judge Gleeson went to college at Georgetown University and received his law degree in 1980 from the University of Virginia School of Law. After serving as a law clerk for a year for the Hon. Boyce F. Martin, Jr., United States Circuit Judge in the Sixth Circuit, Judge Gleeson was a litigation associate at Cravath, Swaine & Moore from 1981 to 1985. In 1985, Judge Gleeson became an Assistant United States Attorney in the Eastern District of New York. During the next ten years, he served as Chief of Appeals, Chief of Special Prosecutions, Chief of Organized Crime, and Chief of the Criminal Division, the position he occupied when he was appointed to the bench. Judge Gleeson has been an Adjunct Professor of Law at New York University School of Law since 1995. From 1990 to 1997, he was an adjunct professor at Brooklyn Law School. In 1994, he served as the John A. Ewald, Jr., Distinguished Visiting Professor of Law at the University of Virginia School of Law. He is a co-author of the treatise Federal Criminal Practice: A Second Circuit Handbook, LexisNexis (2009) (with Gordon Mehler and David C. James), and has authored the following articles: “The Sentencing Commission and Prosecutorial Discretion,” 36 Hofstra Law Review 639 (2008); “Supervising Federal Capital Punishment: Why The Attorney General Should Defer When U.S. Attorneys Recommend Against The Death Penalty,” 89 Virginia Law Review 1697 (2003); "Supervising Criminal Investigations: The Proper Scope Of The Supervisory Power Of Federal Judges," 5 Journal of Law and Social Policy 423 (1997); "Sentence Bargaining Under The Guidelines," 8 Federal Sentencing Reporter 6 (1996); "The Federalization Of Organized Crime: The Advantages of Federal Prosecution,” 46 Hastings Law Journal 1095 (1995)(with John C. Jeffries, Jr.) Judge Gleeson was a member of the Defender Services Committee of the Judicial Conference of the United States from 1999 to 2008, and was Chair of that committee from 2005 to 2008. Judge Gleeson is married and has two daughters.