Michael Mukasey

Michael Bernard Mukasey(pronounced /mjuːˈkeɪzi/) (born July 28, 1941) is an American lawyer, the 81st Attorney General of the United States, and followed Alberto Gonzales, who resigned from office. Mukasey also served for 18 years as a judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, six of those years as Chief Judge. He is the recipient of several awards, most notably the Learned Hand Medalof the Federal Bar Council. Mukasey is the second Jewish U.S. Attorney General.
Michael Mukasey's father was born near Baranavichy in the Russian Empire (modern-day Belarus) and emigrated to the US in 1921. Michael Mukasey was born in the Bronx in 1941. Mukasey graduated in 1959 from the Ramaz School, a Modern Orthodox Jewish prep school in Manhattan. He is an Orthodox Jew. His wife, Susan, was later a teacher and headmistress of the lower school at Ramaz, and both of their children (Marc and Jessica) attended the school.

As an undergraduate student, Mukasey was the editorials editor of the Columbia Daily Spectatorat Columbia University, where he received his B.A. in 1963. At Yale Law School he received his LL.B. in 1967. Mukasey practiced law for 20 years in New York City, serving for four years as an Assistant United States Attorney in the federal prosecutor's office in which he worked with Rudolph Giuliani. In 1976, he joined the New York law firm of Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler, to which he returned after retirement from the U.S. District Court. Mukasey began teaching at Columbia Law School in the Spring of 1993 and has taught there every spring semester since.

Mukasey's son Marc L. Mukasey, as of 2007, leads the white-collar criminal defense practice in the New York office of Bracewell & Giuliani The Mukaseys have a professional relationship with Rudy Giuliani; Mukasey and son were also justice advisers to Rudy Giuliani's presidential campaign.[18] Mukasey administered the oath of office to Mayor-elect Giuliani in 1994 and 1998.