U.S. District Judge John Gleeson, a Brooklyn federal judge who supports sentencing and other criminal justice reforms, is stepping down after 21 years on the bench.
Judge Gleeson, 62, is leaving on March 9 and would have been next in line to become chief judge for the Eastern District of New York, which includes Brooklyn and Queens. He will leave to practice law, but declined to say where.
The judge’s departure was first reported by the New York Daily News.
Before becoming a judge, he was a federal prosecutor in the Brooklyn U.S. attorney’s office, where he was best known for securing the conviction of the late mafia boss John Gotti. He was serving as chief of the office’s criminal division when President Bill Clinton nominated him to the bench in 1994.
An advocate for alternatives to incarceration, Judge Gleeson helped create two programs in Brooklyn federal court aimed at reducing or eliminating prison time for non-violent drug offenders and younger defendants. The programs were among the first of their kind in the federal court system and provide counseling, treatment and other services.
The judge has criticized mandatory minimum sentences and plea negotiation practices, writing in a 2013 opinion that the government routinely abuses its power to extract guilty pleas from defendants. He called such tactics “unsound and brutally unfair.”
In 2013, Judge Gleeson approved a $1.9 billion deal between the government and HSBC Holdings PLC, which allowed the bank to avoid prosecution for ignoring money laundering risks. Though he blessed the deferred-prosecution agreement, Judge Gleeson put prosecutors on notice that courts can reject criminal settlements to protect themselves from “lawlessness or impropriety.”
Last year, he expunged the 14-year-old fraud conviction of a woman who said her criminal record prevented her from holding on to jobs, in what legal experts described as an unprecedented ruling. Prosecutors have appealed the ruling, arguing that judges have no authority to erase valid convictions.
Judge Gleeson went to college at Georgetown University and then received his law degree from the University of Virginia School of Law. Prior to joining government as a prosecutor, he worked at Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP as a litigation associate.