Michael J. Garcia

Michael John Garcia (born October 8, 1961) is an American lawyer, judge and former Republican government official.

Garcia was born in 1961 in the Woodhaven neighborhood of the New York City borough of Queens and grew up in Valley Stream where he attended Valley Stream Central High School on Long Island.

Originally intending to be a journalist, Garcia earned undergraduate and master's degrees in English literature from SUNY Binghamton and the College of William & Mary, respectively.

Garcia eventually decided to study law and graduated as valedictorian of the Albany Law School of Union University in 1989.

After law school, Garcia practiced corporate law for a year at the Wall Street law firm Cahill Gordon & Reindel.

He then served as a law clerk for Judge Judith Kaye of the New York Court of Appeals from 1990 to 1992.

From 1992 to 2001, Garcia was a prosecutor with the Office of the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York.

In that role, he was intimately involved in a number of high-profile terrorism investigations and trials.

Within months of joining the Office, Garcia was assigned to the trial team prosecuting four defendants for perpetrating the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

In the ensuing trial, the four defendants were convicted on all counts.

For his work on that case, Garcia received the Attorney General's Award for Exceptional Service, the highest reward presented by the U.S. Department of Justice.

Garcia said the case "would define my career in Government service."

For his work in a number of high-profile terrorism investigations and trials as Assistant U.S. Attorney, Garcia received two Attorney General's Awards for Exceptional Service (1994, 1997), the Attorney General's Award for Distinguished Service (2002), and the CIA's Agency Seal Medallion (2002).

In 1995, Garcia went to Manila in the Philippines to direct the investigation and prosecution of the terrorist conspiracy led by Ramzi Yousef and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to bomb 12 U.S. airliners flying from Asia to the United States.

In 1996, Yousef and two other defendants were convicted of all counts.

For his work on that case, Garcia received his second Attorney General's Award for Exceptional Service.

Garcia was assigned as one of the lead prosecutors in the case against four al-Qaeda operatives standing trial in New York for perpetrating the 1998 United States embassy bombings in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and Nairobi, Kenya, which killed more than 200 people.

The jury returned guilty verdicts on all 302 counts for the four defendants.

For his work on that case, Garcia received the Attorney General's Award for Distinguished

Service and the CIA's Agency Seal Medallion for his efforts coordinating with the intelligence community.

From August 2001 to November 2002, Garcia served as the Senate-confirmed Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Export Enforcement in the U.S. Department of Commerce.

In that role, "he was the top federal enforcer of dual-use export control laws."

Garcia served as Acting Commissioner of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) from December 2002 to February 2003.

In that position, he led the transition of the agency into the Department of Homeland Security.

Garcia previously served as Assistant Secretary for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (2003–2005), Acting Commissioner of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (2002–2003), Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Export Enforcement (2001–2002), and an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Southern District of New York (1992–2001).

From March 2003 to 2005, Garcia served in the Department of Homeland Security as the Senate-confirmed Assistant Secretary for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the second largest investigative agency in the U.S. government following the FBI.

Overlapping with this period, from 2003 to 2006, Garcia was also Vice President of the Americas for Interpol, the international police organization.

While vice president, he served on Interpol's executive committee, the body charged with overseeing the budget and strategic direction of the agency.

On January 15, 2004, Garcia announced the government had busted a Belarus-based international child pornography ring, including the arrest of more than 30 people on federal charges relating to child pornography and money laundering.

He is a former U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York (2005–2008).

Between his service as United States Attorney and his appointment to the Court of Appeals, Garcia was a partner at the law firm Kirkland & Ellis.

He has also served as chairman of El Museo del Barrio.

On March 19, 2005, Garcia announced a record $11 million civil immigration settlement with Walmart for its use of several hundred undocumented janitorial workers.

Garcia served as the Senate-confirmed U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York from September 2005 to December 1, 2008.

According to The Wall Street Journal, under his tenure his "office became well known for the successful prosecution of public-corruption and terrorism-related cases."

In notable white-collar criminal cases, he "obtained guilty pleas in a fraud case against former executives of collapsed financial firm Refco Inc., and successfully prosecuted both large-scale insider trading at Wall Street firms and cases of stock-option backdating."

He also oversaw "a series of high-profile public corruption cases," including the Eliot Spitzer prostitution scandal, where he declined to prosecute Spitzer for violating the Mann Act, and the prosecution of several state politicians and city officials, such as former Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik and Democratic political fundraiser Norman Hsu.

In the international domain, his office "successfully prosecuted corruption cases stemming from the United Nations oil-for-food scandal."

Garcia also led the prosecution of the Russian arms trafficker Viktor Bout, known as the "Merchant of Death."

Since February 2016, he has served as an Associate Judge of the New York Court of Appeals, that state's highest court.