Hakeem Jeffries

Hakeem Sekou Jeffries (born August 4, 1970 ) is an American politician and attorney who has served as House Minority Leader and Leader of the House Democratic Caucus since 2023.

Jeffries graduated from Midwood High School, a public school, in 1988.

He then studied political science at Binghamton University, graduating in 1992 with a Bachelor of Arts degree with honors.

During his time at Binghamton he became a member of the Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity.

Jeffries continued his education at Georgetown University's McCourt School of Public Policy, earning a Master of Public Policy degree in 1994.

He then attended New York University School of Law, where he was a member of the New York University Law Review.

He graduated magna cum laude in 1997 with a Juris Doctor degree and delivered the student address at Convocation.

Upon graduating from law school, Jeffries became a law clerk for Judge Harold Baer Jr. of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.

From 1998 to 2004, Jeffries was in private practice at the law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison.

In 2004, he became a corporate litigator for television companies Viacom and CBS, where among other matters he worked on the Super Bowl XXXVIII halftime show controversy.

During Jeffries's time at Paul, Weiss, he also served as director of intergovernmental affairs for the New York State Chapter of the National Association of Minority Contractors (construction contractors) and as the president of Black Attorneys for Progress.

Jeffries was elected and reelected, serving in the New York State Assembly for a Brooklyn district from 2007 to 2012.

During this time, he introduced over 70 bills.

In 2007, while still in his first term in the State Assembly, Jeffries endorsed and supported Barack Obama, and was among Obama's earliest supporters in Hillary Clinton's home state.

In one interview, he said, "When I first ran for office, some people suggested that someone with the name 'Hakeem Jeffries' could never get elected, and when I saw someone with the name 'Barack Obama' get elected to the U.S. Senate, it certainly inspired me."

While in the Assembly, Jeffries distinguished himself as a leader on seeking bipartisan criminal justice reform.

In 2010, Governor David Paterson signed the Stop-and-Frisk database bill that banned police from compiling names and addresses of those stopped but not arrested during street searches.

Jeffries wrote and sponsored that law.

He also sponsored and passed House Bill A.9834-A (now law), the inmate-base gerrymandering law that counts prison populations of upstate districts as part of the public population, becoming the second state to end this practice.

He has been the U.S. representative for New York's 8th congressional district since 2013 and was a member of the New York State Assembly from 2007 to 2012.

Jeffries was born and raised in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, New York.

He attended law school at New York University, graduating with honors and becoming a successful corporate lawyer before running for elected office.

Both his state assembly district and congressional district are anchored in Brooklyn.

On April 11, 2013, Jeffries introduced the Prison Ship Martyrs' Monument Preservation Act (H.R. 1501; 113th Congress).

The bill would direct the Secretary of the Interior to study the suitability and feasibility of designating the Prison Ship Martyrs' Monument in Fort Greene Park in Brooklyn as a unit of the National Park System (NPS).

Jeffries said, "as one of America's largest revolutionary war burial sites and in tribute to the patriots that lost their lives fighting for our nation's independence, this monument deserves to be considered as a unit of the National Park Service."

On April 28, 2014, the Prison Ship Martyrs's Monument Preservation Act was passed by the House.

On July 15, 2014, Jeffries, who in private practice addressed intellectual property issues, introduced the To establish the Law School Clinic Certification Program of the United States Patent and Trademark Office (H.R. 5108; 113th Congress), which would establish the Law School Clinic Certification Program of the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) to be available to accredited law schools for the ten-year period after enactment of the Act.

The families of the officers, who had been killed in their patrol car on December 20, 2014, in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Jeffries's district, had been the recipients of charitable fundraising.

Before the law's enactment, people would have had to make those contributions by December 31, 2014, to qualify for a tax deduction in connection with taxes filed in 2015.

In 2015, Jeffries led the effort to pass The Slain Officer Family Support Act, which extended the tax deadline for people making donations to organizations supporting the families of deceased NYPD Detectives Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos.

With the change, contributions made until April 15, 2015, were deductible.

President Obama signed the bill into law on April 1, 2015.

In 2015, prominent African-American pastors called for Jeffries to step into the 2017 Democratic primary for mayor against de Blasio.

In Congress, Jeffries chaired the House Democratic Caucus from 2019 to 2023.

The members of the caucus unanimously elected him to succeed Nancy Pelosi as leader in November 2022.

This made him the first African American to lead a party in either chamber of the United States Congress.

Jeffries was born in New York City, at Brooklyn Hospital Center to Laneda Jeffries, a social worker, and Marland Jeffries, a state substance-abuse counselor.

He has one brother, Hasan.

He grew up in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, and is a lifelong member of the Cornerstone Baptist Church.