Meet Ronald Ellis, Madoff Judge, and Lev Dassin, Madoff Prosecutor
The judge who refused to revoke bail for accused financier Bernard Madoff on Monday wasn’t swayed by the political firestorm—and that’s typical of his personality, according to those who know him.
Judge Ronald Ellis is a graduate of New York University law school and a former lawyer for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, the New York Times reports. Those who worked with the judge told the Times he is calm and careful.
“He’s very steady, impervious to the politics of the day, and takes his role as a dispassionate observer very seriously,” former law clerk Raymond Audain told the newspaper.
Fellow Magistrate Judge James Francis IV described Ellis in the article as thoughtful and “not somebody who shoots from the hip.”
Meanwhile, the U.S. attorney who charged Madoff and New York lawyer Marc Dreier, accused of defrauding hedge funds, got the job only last month. Lev Dassin was a deputy to U.S. Attorney Michael Garcia and took over the job in December when his boss resigned, the New York Times reports in a separate story. But the tough prosecutor also is willing to change his mind, making a decision last week to drop charges against former Reagan budget director David Stockman.
The story delves into Dassin’s resume and his personality, described as tenacious, respectful, fair and “meticulously organized.” Dassin likes to quote Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt, as well as John Belushi’s rallying cry in Animal House, “Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?”
Despite his tastes in film, Dassin has a degree in English literature from Cornell and a law degree from New York University, the story says. His wife is a lawyer with a children’s legal advocacy group. Dassin became a prosecutor in 1992. He left the office, working for a private company, then becoming a partner in Kaye Scholer. He rejoined the office in 2005, where he oversaw many of the office’s cases involving terrorism, corruption and white-collar crime.
