Three Alumni Named as Top Aides to N.Y. Governor-Elect Andrew Cuomo

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Three Alumni Named as Top Aides to N.Y. Governor-Elect Andrew Cuomo

 

Public Affairs, 212-854-2650
 
New York, Dec. 9, 2010—New York Governor-elect Andrew Cuomo announced his senior staff Thursday, including three Columbia Law School alumni who have served with him in his role as the state’s attorney general.
 
Benjamin Lawsky ’95 will have one of the top jobs in the administration, serving as Chief of Staff. He currently serves as a special assistant and deputy counselor in the attorney general’s office.
 
Mylan Denerstein ’93 will become Counsel to the governor. She has held a variety of legal jobs in the public sector, and is currently Executive Deputy Attorney General for Social Justice under Cuomo.
 
Leslie G. Leach ’78, a former state judge, will serve as Appointments Secretary. He now works as Executive Deputy Attorney General for the Division of State Counsel.
 
“I am privileged to welcome such a diverse group of extraordinary talent to help our administration take on the challenge of restoring our state government and making it work for the people once again,” Cuomo said in a statement.
 
More details about the appointees were released by Cuomo’s office:
 
  • Benjamin Lawsky was appointed Deputy Counselor and Special Assistant to the Attorney General in January 2007. In the Attorney General’s Office, he led the nationwide investigation of the student loan industry and oversaw the investigations of Wall Street bonuses and the Bank of America-Merrill Lynch merger. Lawsky also served as General Counsel of the Cuomo 2010 campaign. Prior to joining the Attorney General’s Office, Lawsky served from late 2001 until 2007 as an Assistant United States Attorney in the Southern District of New York, where he prosecuted securities fraud, organized crime, and terrorism cases. Prior to that, Lawsky was Chief Counsel to Senator Charles E. Schumer. From 1997 to 1999, he was a Trial Attorney in the Civil Division of the Department of Justice in Washington.
 
  • Mylan L. Denerstein has served as the Executive Deputy Attorney General for Social Justice from January 2007 to the present managing almost 100 attorneys statewide in the areas of Charities, Civil Rights, Environmental Protection, Health Care, Labor, and Tobacco Compliance. Prior to her current appointment, Denerstein served as the Deputy Fire Commissioner for Legal Affairs for the New York City Fire Department, the largest municipal fire department in the country. From 1996 – 2005, Denerstein served in the United States Attorney’s Office, Southern District, first as an Assistant United States Attorney, prosecuting complex securities and insurance fraud, money laundering and organized crime. She later became Deputy Chief of the Criminal Division where she assisted in managing the Criminal Division with over 100 Assistant United States Attorneys.
 
  • Judge Leslie G. Leach was appointed Executive Deputy Attorney General for the Division of State Counsel in February 2007. Prior to the appointment, he had served since 2004 as the Administrative Judge of the Eleventh Judicial District, Supreme Court, Queens County. Leach was appointed as a Judge of the Criminal Court of the City of New York by Mayor David N. Dinkins in 1993, reappointed by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg in 2002, while serving as an Acting Justice of the Supreme Court, and was elected a Justice of Supreme Court in November 2003.
 
Columbia Law School, founded in 1858, stands at the forefront of legal education and of the law in a global society. Columbia Law School joins its traditional strengths in international and comparative law, constitutional law, administrative law, business law and human rights law with pioneering work in the areas of intellectual property, digital technology, sexuality and gender, criminal, national security, and environmental law.