Cuomo’s Successor Begins Filling Big Shoes

As Andrew Cuomo, the Sheriff of Wall Street, moves from his incredibly successful stint as N.Y. Attorney General – note the action he filed just this week against Ernst & Young stemming from the Lehman Brothers meltdown – to N.Y. Governor, Cuomo’s successor, Eric Schneiderman, has begun to announce his team. There are a number of appointments we believe to be of particular interest to readers of the Financial Fraud Law blog. Here they are:

Harlan Levy will serve as First Deputy Attorney General. Levy, a partner at Boies Schiller & Flexner, is chair of the Council on Criminal Justice of the New York City Bar Association, a member of the Executive Committee of the Board of Directors of the Fund for Modern Courts, and a member of the American Bar Association Committee on Criminal Justice Standards. Levy previously served as a homicide prosecutor in the N.Y. County District Attorney's Office and in 2009 co-chaired the Special Victims Committee of the transition team of Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance, Jr. He earned a B.A. from Amherst College and J.D. from Columbia Law School.

Barbara D. Underwood will serve as Solicitor General. Underwood has been Solicitor General of the State of New York since January 2007.  Prior to her appointment, she served as counsel and as chief assistant to the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York.  She was the Acting Solicitor General of the U.S. from January to June 2001, and Principal Deputy Solicitor General of the U.S. from March 1998 to January 2001.  She has argued 19 cases in the U.S. Supreme Court, and she has extensive appellate experience in both federal and state courts of appeals. Underwood has served in executive positions in the Queens and Brooklyn District Attorneys’ Offices, supervising appellate litigation and other matters, and as a trial attorney in the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office. She was also a tenured professor of law at Yale Law School, law clerk to Chief Judge David L. Bazelon of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and to Justice Thurgood Marshall of the U.S. Supreme Court.  She earned a B.A. from Harvard University (Radcliffe College) and a J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center.

Terryl Brown will serve as counsel to the Attorney General. Brown has served as the executive vice president and general counsel of the New York Power Authority (“NYPA”) for the past two years.  Prior to joining NYPA, Brown was acting counsel to Governor David A. Paterson, and previously served as first assistant counsel to Governor Paterson and former Governor Spitzer. Prior to joining the governor’s office in 2007, Brown served as the Assistant Deputy Attorney General of the Division of Public Advocacy in the New York State Attorney General’s Office. In 1998, Brown was the deputy chief of the Civil Rights Bureau, and before that was an Assistant Attorney General in the Litigation Bureau defending actions brought against the state, state agencies and state officials. Brown worked in private practice and also worked overseas for the Dutch law firm, Nauta Dutilh. Ms. Brown received a B.A. from Pace University, and a J.D. and M.B.A. from the University of Pittsburgh.

Karla Sanchez will serve as Executive Deputy Attorney General for Economic Justice. Sanchez is a partner at Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler. She has successfully litigated before courts and arbitration panels throughout the country representing both plaintiffs and defendants involving a broad range of products and disciplines, including residential mortgage-backed securities, pharmaceuticals, medical devices, underwater sea cables, and consumer products. She is the first Hispanic partner at Patterson Belknap and was recognized as one of Crain’s New York Business’s 40 Under Forty. Prior to joining Patterson Belknap, Sanchez served as Law Clerk to the Honorable Deborah A. Batts, U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. She received her J.D. from Fordham University School of Law and A.B. from Columbia University.

Nancy Hoppock will serve as Executive Deputy Attorney General for Criminal Justice. Hoppock joined the U.S. Attorney’s Office in New Jersey in 2001, where she handled a broad range of federal white collar and violent crime cases.  During her tenure with the U.S. Attorney's Office she was promoted to supervise the Government Fraud Unit, then became the deputy chief of the Criminal Division, and later the chief of the Criminal Division, where she oversaw all seven units with the U.S. Attorney’s Office to include Asset Forfeiture, Organized Crime, General Crimes, Economic Crimes, Health Care Fraud, Narcotics, and National Security. Hoppock was a recipient of the Department of Justice’s Directors Award this year for her work on the prosecution of a human trafficking case arising out of Newark, United States vs. Afolabi, et al. A career prosecutor for 16 years, Hoppock spent seven years as an Assistant District Attorney with the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office in its trial division. She received her B.A. from the University of Delaware and her law degree from Seton Hall.