Richard David Emery

Richard David Emery (born March 5, 1946) is an American lawyer.

He is a founding partner of Emery, Celli, Brinckerhoff Abady Ward & Maazel LLP.

Emery was born in Boston, Massachusetts on March 5, 1946.

He received a B.A. from Brown University in 1967 and received a J.D., cum laude, in 1970 from Columbia University Law School, where he was named a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar.

Following law school, he became a law clerk for Gus J. Solomon of the U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon.

After graduating from law school, Emery moved to Washington and founded the Institutional Legal Services Project, a state-financed public-interest firm that represented people who were incarcerated in prisons, mental institutions and juvenile facilities.

After directing the project for six years, he moved back to New York in 1977 and joined the New York Civil Liberties Union as a staff attorney and worked there for a decade.

Emery was part of New York Governor Mario Cuomo's State Commission on Government Integrity in the late 1980s.

He was also part of the part of New York Governor Eliot Spitzer's Transition Committee for Government Reform Issues.

He married actress Lori Singer in 1980.

In 1987, Emery was offered a seat on Governor Mario Cuomo's State Commission on Government Integrity.

He accepted the offer and resigned from New York Civil Liberties Union.

The same year he became of counsel to Lankenau, Kovner & Bickford, and, thereafter, a partner, focusing on civil and civil rights cases at the firm.

There, he represented Robert McLaughlin, who had been wrongfully convicted.

Emery obtained McLaughlin's release and one of the first large awards of compensation for wrongful conviction.

One of Emery's most notable cases at the firm was a lawsuit charging that the New York City Board of Estimate violated the principle of "one person, one vote" by granting the Staten Island Borough President, who represented fewer than 400,000 people, the same power as the Brooklyn Borough President, who represented more than two million.

In 1989, Emery won the case, arguing in the U.S. Supreme Court and achieving the invalidation of the Board on one person-one vote constitutional grounds.

The couple had a son, Jacques Singer-Emery in 1991, before divorcing in 1996.

In 1996, Emery represented Laurance Rockefeller, Jr. and presidential candidate Steve Forbes in their bids to gain ballot access.

Emery left Lankenau, Kovner & Bickford and founded Emery, Celli, Brinckerhoff & Abady in 1997.

In 2000, he represented John McCain in his bid to gain access to the 2000 New York Republican presidential primary ballot and in 2001, Emery represented over 60,000 misdemeanor detainees in a case against New York City's strip search policy.

Emery won the case and New York City agreed to pay $50 million to 50,000 people who had been illegally strip-searched.

Emery also represented the three Jackson brothers starved by foster parents in New Jersey in K.J. et al. v. Division of Youth and Family Services et al.

Emery married Melania Levitsky in 2002 and had a daughter, Nikita Lev Emery in 2004, later divorcing in 2020.

In March 2004, Emery was appointed to the New York State Commission on Judicial Conduct, by New York State Senate Minority Leader John L. Sampson, and served until March 2016.

In November 2006, newly elected Governor of New York Eliot Spitzer appointed Emery to his Transition Committee for Government Reform Issues.

After Spitzer resigned in March 2008, Governor David Paterson appointed Emery to the New York State Commission on Public Integrity.

In 2010, Emery won a civil rights lawsuit over strip searches performed on non-violent, low-level offenders at the Rikers Island jail facility.

As a result of the lawsuit, the city agreed to pay $33 million on behalf of more than 100,000 plaintiffs.

Emery represented Roger Clemens' trainer in a defamation lawsuit about steroid use and Duke lacrosse player Reade Seligmann in a civil suit for wrongful prosecution.

Emery also represented Cooper Union in a suit to restore tuition-free education.

He was the Chair of the New York City Civilian Complaint Review Board from 2014 to 2016.

In 2014, Emery was appointed as the Chair of the New York City Civilian Complaint Review Board (CCRB) by the Mayor of New York City, Bill de Blasio.

As the chairman of the CCRB, Emery had aggressive investigations conducted into police misconduct including the use of chokeholds, false statements made by police, and unlawful searches.

Emery resigned from the Board on April 13, 2016.

Emery is a member of the City Club, an organization that works on preservation issues in New York City and represented the Club in its environmental suit to block a park Barry Diller planned to build in the Hudson River.

He is also the founder and president of the West End Preservation Society.

Emery has taught as an adjunct professor at the New York University and University of Washington schools of law as well as currently at Fordham University Law School and Cardozo Law School.

Emery is a columnist for the New York Law Journal, writing on judicial conduct.

He was a member of the New York State Commission on Judicial Conduct for 13 years until March 2017.