This attorney has been selected for the recognitions mentioned herein, which have been conferred by the corresponding publications and/or organizations noted. An overview of the award selection methodologies for these recognitions can be found at https://www.gibbonslaw.com/awards. Links to certain specific methodologies are embedded in individual entries. Results may vary depending on your particular facts and legal circumstances. No aspect of this advertisement has been approved by the Supreme Court of New Jersey.
Larry Co-Chairs the Gibbons White Collar & Investigations Group and is a longtime Director of the firm’s John J. Gibbons Fellowship in Public Interest & Constitutional Law, which litigates historic, cutting-edge civil rights and civil liberties cases. Prior to joining the firm in 1990 as its first Gibbons Fellow, he served as an Assistant Federal Public Defender for the District of New Jersey for five years; he previously served as a Law Clerk to the Honorable H. Lee Sarokin, United States District Judge.
Larry is the former president of both the Association of the Federal Bar of New Jersey and Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers of New Jersey, each of which has awarded him its highest honor—the William J. Brennan, Jr. Award and Honorable Lawrence A. Whipple Memorial Award, respectively; he has also been awarded the New Jersey State Bar Association’s Medal of Honor, also its most prestigious award. Larry has served on, and chaired, numerous court, government and bar association committees (including that he was C-Chair of the American Bar Association’s Criminal Litigation Committee), as well as non-profit and philanthropic boards. He has been a member of the faculties of Seton Hall, Rutgers, and New York University Law Schools.
Larry is a recognized authority in constitutional and criminal law and procedure, responsible for many seminal federal and state court decisions in a broad range of cases, and is a Fellow of both the International Academy of Trial Lawyers and the American College of Trial Lawyers. He is also a Lifetime Fellow of the American Bar Foundation.
In addition to the recognitions described above, Larry is the recipient of numerous honors from organizations such as the Trial Attorneys of New Jersey New, the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice, the Thurgood Marshall College Fund, the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey, Legal Services of New Jersey, Garden State Equality, Partners for Women and Justice, and the Essex County Bar Association, among others. He was selected “Lawyer of the Year” for 2013 by the New Jersey Law Journal, in recognition of his work in winning the right to marriage for same-sex couples in New Jersey; he was also among the first New Jersey lawyers to receive the Law Journal’s Lifetime Achievement Award. He has long been included on lists published by Best Lawyers® in the White Collar category, including its “Lawyers of the Year” lists in 2013, and by Super Lawyers, which also regularly includes him in its “Top 10 Lawyers in New Jersey” list; many years, he is recognized as the #1 lawyer in New Jersey. Chambers USA Guide to America’s Leading Lawyers for Business has referred to Larry as one of the “leading individuals in the area of White Collar Crime & Government Investigations,” writing that “he is noted for his first-class white collar practice which includes defending against allegations of tax and pension fraud, and political corruption.”
Areas of Focus
Criminal Defense
Building on his experience in the Office of the Federal Defender for the District of New Jersey, where he served as an Assistant Public Defender between 1985 and 1990, and relying on his insight from that experience, Larry is an extremely experienced and well-regarded trial lawyer, who has tried scores of cases to verdict and who has broad, substantive experience in such areas as securities, antitrust, and many other white collar criminal issues, including health care fraud, political corruption, tax and pension fraud and government procurement abuse. His practice spans both federal and state cases, and both trials and appeals; he has argued literally hundreds of cases before federal and state appellate courts. He also handles civil matters, some but not all of which are related to white collar criminal matters, for example, in qui tam cases brought under federal and state False Claims Acts, the securities laws (whether by private parties or the SEC) and in professional misconduct matters such as attorney ethics cases and other disciplinary proceedings. Larry is renowned for his legal analysis and writing abilities, and is well known for exploring, and ultimately advancing, creative legal arguments in the pre-indictment, trial, and appellate contexts.
Gibbons Fellowship
As the Director of this award-winning pro bono program, Larry is responsible for the scope of the Fellowship’s work and the breadth of issues it addresses. While “public interest” and “constitutional law” encompass a necessarily broad range of concerns, Larry has, over 35 years, defined the focus of the Fellowship and its goal of affecting social change, providing representation to the unrepresented or underrepresented in the most important cases and with regard to the most important issues of our time, and improving access to the legal system for even those most disenfranchised in our society.
Under Larry’s direction, and supervising dozens of extraordinarily talented lawyers over the past 3 ½ decades, the Fellowship has litigated the most significant legal issues of our time – from the death penalty to same-sex marriage (which the Fellowship won in New Jersey in 2013, before the U.S. Supreme Court decided the issue); from the rights of detained enemy combatants at Guantánamo Bay and elsewhere (including the right of the public to know about their treatment) to equal educational opportunity; from the law of domestic violence to the rights of pregnant women, juvenile defendants, LGBTQ+ persons and prison inmates, among many others.
Over the past year alone, the Gibbons Fellowship has won a number of significant victories in federal and state cases, headlined by its successful defense of the New Jersey Bar Association’s affirmative action program and its successful defense of an Alabama death row inmate whose capital sentence was vacated as unconstitutional. Meanwhile, Larry and his team continue to litigate cutting-edge matters, winning significant victories in immigration rights cases, challenging segregation in New Jersey’s public schools, advocating for rehabilitative services for those who have been civilly committed; vindicating the rights of federal inmates to proper treatment for COVID-19, working to combat homelessness and for affordable housing, and seeking policing reform. Meanwhile, they continue to weigh in on important issues of criminal procedure, including limits on the use of junk science to obtain criminal convictions.
Embracing an incredible range of civil and criminal subject matters, in trial and appellate, federal and state, and direct and amicus work, Larry has uniquely positioned the Fellowship to not only serve its clients and the courts but also significantly impact the law.
Credentials
Education
Harvard Law School (J.D., cum laude)
Harvard University (B.A., magna cum laude)
Stockholm University Graduate School of International Studies (Sweden) (Rector's Degree)
Professional Admissions
State of New Jersey
State of New York
United States District Court for the District of New Jersey
United States District Court for the Northern District of New York
United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York
United States District Court for the Southern District of New York
United States District Court for the District of Colorado
United States District Court for the District of Connecticut
United States District Court for the Central District of Illinois
United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan
United States District Court for the Western District of Michigan
United States District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma
United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit
United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit
United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit
United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit
United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit
United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit
United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit
Supreme Court of the United States
Professional Activities
Association of the Federal Bar of New Jersey
Trustee (2003-2006)
Officer (2006-2014)
President (2012-2013)
American Academy of Appellate Lawyers
American College of Trial Lawyers
Fellow (2007-present)
Member, New Jersey State Committee (2008-2015)
International Academy of Trial Lawyers
Fellow (2011-present)
New Jersey State Legislature Clean Slate Commission (2020-2022)
New Jersey State Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights (April 2008-present)
Chairman, (2017-present)
Chairman, Subcommittee on Immigration (2010-2011)
New Jersey Reentry Services Commission
Co-Chair, (2019-present)
New Jersey Sentencing and Disposition Commission
Writer and Advisor (2019-present)
New Jersey Coalition for Diverse and Inclusive Schools
Board of Directors (2017-present)
New Jersey Attorney General Working Group on Establishing a Conviction Review Unit (2018-2019)
U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey, Defense Attorney Advisory Committee (2009- 2017)
New Jersey Institute for Social Justice
Board of Director (2007-2010)
New Jersey Commission on Government Efficiency and Reform
Member, Sentencing/Corrections Task Force
Chairman, Subcommittee on Corrections, Probation and Parole Practices (2007-2009)
Third Circuit Bar Association Steering Committee (2006-2008)
New Jersey Office of the Child Advocate
Member, Board of Advisors (2004-2007)
Governor’s Council on HIV/AIDS and Related Bloodborne Pathogens (2003-2011)
American Bar Association
Fellow of the American Bar Foundation (Life Fellow)
Co-Chair, Criminal Litigation Committee (2003-2006)
Association of the Federal Bar of the State of New Jersey (2003-2004)
Trustee
United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit
Merit Selection Committee for the Federal Public Defender for the District of New Jersey (1996-1997, 2000-2001, 2004-2005, 2017, 2021-2022)
Lawyers Advisory Committee (2008-2012, 2015-2019)
Chair, Committee to Review Reappointment of Federal Public Defender in the District of New Jersey (2000-2001, 2004-2005, 2017)
Task Force on Counsel for Indigent Litigants New Jersey Steering Committee (1998-1999)
Co-Chair, Task Force on Equal Treatment in the Courts Commission on Race and Ethnicity (1994-1997)
Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law
Board of Directors (2001-2008)
New Jersey Law Journal
Member, Editorial Board (2001-2021)
Historical Society of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit Member, (1999-present)
President (2008-present)
United States District Court, District of New Jersey
Criminal Justice Act Panel Selection and Management Committee (2002-present)
Lawyers Advisory Committee (1999-2005)
Merit Selection Committee for United States Magistrate Judge
Chairman (1998), Member (1998, 2002)
Civil Justice Reform Act Advisory Committee (1994-1999)
Supreme Court of New Jersey
District Fee Arbitration Committee for Essex County (1993-1997)
Chair (1996-1997)
Vice Chair (1995-1996)
Common Cause New Jersey
Board of Directors (1999-2005)
Legal Services Foundation of Essex County
Board of Directors (1995-2020)
The Fund for New Jersey
Board of Directors (1997-2017, 2020-present)
Co-Chairman of the Board (2009-2015)
Essex – Newark Legal Services, Inc. (1987-1998)
President (1992-1998)
Education Law Center, Inc. (1994-2010)
Vice Chair (1995-2005)
Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers of New Jersey
Trustee (1988-2002)
President (2001-2002)
Officer (1997-2002)
New Jersey Association on Corrections (1993-1996)
Council on Compulsive Gambling of New Jersey, Inc. (1991-1993)
Advisory Board (1992-present)
New Jersey State Bar Association
Working Group on Jury Selection (2021-present)
Commission on Racial Equality in the Law (2020-present)
Blue Ribbon Commission on Unmet Legal Needs (2015-2016)
Amicus Committee (2013-2014)
Essex County Bar Association
National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers
Harvard Law School Association of New Jersey
Chairman, Public Interest Fellowship Committee (1996-1998)
Harvard Fellowship in Public Interest Law (1983-1984)
Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law
Trustee
Gibbons Law Alert blog (www.gibbonslawalert.com)
Editorial Board
Judicial Clerkship(s)
Honorable H. Lee Sarokin, United States District Judge
Legal Employment
Seton Hall University School of Law
Adjunct Assistant Professor of Law, 1992-1999
Adjunct Instructor, Legal Writing, 1986-1987
Rutgers Law School
Adjunct Assistant Professor of Law, 1991-1995
New York University School of Law
Adjunct Assistant Professor of Law, 1988-1991
Assistant Federal Public Defender, District of New Jersey, 1985-1990