Patrick Fitzgerald

Patrick J. Fitzgerald (born December 22, 1960) is an American lawyer and partner at the law firm of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom since October 2012.

His father (also named Patrick Fitzgerald) worked as a doorman in Manhattan and a security guard at the 1964 New York World's Fair in Flushing, Queens.

Fitzgerald attended Our Lady Help of Christians grammar school, before going on to Regis High School.

The Senator urged the selection because Patrick Fitzgerald is not from Chicago; Patrick said that he had visited Chicago only one day, for a wedding in 1982, before his selection.

Soon after becoming U.S. Attorney for Northern Illinois, Fitzgerald began an investigation of political appointees of Republican Illinois Governor George Ryan, who were suspected of accepting bribes to give licenses to unqualified truck drivers.

Fitzgerald soon expanded this investigation, uncovering a network of political bribery and gift-giving, and leading to more than 60 indictments.

He received degrees in economics and mathematics from Amherst College, Phi Beta Kappa, before receiving his JD from Harvard Law School in 1985.

He played rugby at Amherst and at Harvard he was a member of the Harvard Business School Rugby Club.

Prior to his appointment, he served as Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Southern District of New York from 1988 to 2001, and as Chief of the Organized Crime-Terrorism Unit since December 1995, where he participated in the prosecutions of Osama bin Laden, Abdel Rahman, and Ramzi Yousef.

After practicing civil law, Fitzgerald became an Assistant United States Attorney in New York City in 1988.

He handled drug trafficking cases and in 1993 assisted in the prosecution of Mafia figure John Gambino, a boss of the Gambino crime family.

In 1994, Fitzgerald became the prosecutor in the case against Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman and 11 others charged in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

In 1996, Fitzgerald became the National Security Coordinator for the Office of the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York.

There, he served on a team of prosecutors investigating Osama bin Laden.

He also served as chief counsel in prosecutions related to the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania.

On September 1, 2001, Fitzgerald was nominated for the position of U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois on the recommendation of U.S. Senator Peter Fitzgerald (no relation), a Republican from Illinois.

On October 24, 2001, the nomination was confirmed by the Senate.

Ryan was indicted in December 2003.

On December 30, 2003, after then-Attorney General John Ashcroft recused himself from the CIA leak grand jury investigation of the Plame affair due to conflicts of interest, Deputy Attorney General James B. Comey, acting as Attorney General in Ashcroft's place, appointed Fitzgerald to the U.S. Department of Justice Office of Special Counsel in charge of the investigation.

Senator Peter Fitzgerald chose not to run for reelection in 2004, leaving Patrick Fitzgerald without a congressional patron.

On July 18, 2005, his office indicted a number of top aides to Democrat Richard M. Daley, the mayor of Chicago, on charges of mail fraud, alleging numerous instances of corruption in hiring practices at City Hall.

In the summer of 2005, there were rumors that he would not be reappointed to a second four-year term in retaliation for his investigations into corruption in Illinois and Chicago government, as well as for his investigation of the Plame scandal.

At the conclusion of the trial in April 2006, Ryan was found guilty on all eighteen counts against him.

Ryan's co-defendant, Chicago businessman Larry Warner, then 67 years old, was convicted of racketeering conspiracy, fraud, attempted extortion, and money laundering.

The two were sentenced on September 6, 2006: Ryan received a sentence of six and one half years, and Warner received a sentence of three years and five months.

Against criticism that these cases were based on circumstantial evidence, Fitzgerald responded: "People now know that if you're part of a corrupt conduct, where one hand is taking care of the other and contracts are going to people, you don't have to say the word 'bribe' out loud. And I think people need to understand we won't be afraid to take strong circumstantial cases into court."

In March 2006, former Chicago City Clerk James Laski pleaded guilty to pocketing nearly $50,000 in bribes for steering city business to two trucking companies.

Laski was the highest-ranking Chicago official and Daley administration employee brought down by Fitzgerald's office in conjunction with the Hired Truck Program scandal.

As special counsel for the U.S. Department of Justice Office of Special Counsel, Fitzgerald was the federal prosecutor in charge of the investigation of the Valerie Plame Affair, which led to the prosecution and conviction in 2007 of Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff Scooter Libby for perjury and obstruction of justice.

As a federal prosecutor, he led a number of high-profile investigations, including those which led to convictions of Illinois Governors Rod Blagojevich and George Ryan, media mogul Conrad Black, several aides to Chicago mayor Richard M. Daley in the Hired Truck Program, and Chicago police detective and torturer Jon Burge.

Fitzgerald was born into a Roman Catholic family of Irish descent in Brooklyn.

Beginning in April 2007, Fitzgerald oversaw Operation Crooked Code, the investigation and prosecution of over two dozen defendants for bribery and related charges in Chicago's Department of Buildings and Zoning.

Fitzgerald married Jennifer Letzkus in June 2008.

On December 9, 2008, federal agents arrested Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich for conspiring to profit from his authority to appoint President Barack Obama's successor to the U.S. Senate.

Fitzgerald said Blagojevich "put a 'for sale' sign on the naming of a United States Senator."

For more than a decade, until June 30, 2012, Fitzgerald was the United States Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois.

On May 23, 2012, Fitzgerald held a press conference informing the public that he was stepping down from his position and retiring as the US Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois Federal Court effective June 30, 2012.

Long-time prosecutor Gary S. Shapiro was named US Attorney until a replacement was selected.

In 2013, Fitzgerald was appointed by Governor Patrick Quinn (D-IL) to the Board of Trustees for the University of Illinois.

Fitzgerald is now a partner with Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom in the firm's Chicago office.