Biography
Thomas Giovanni is an adjunct professor with the Elisabeth Haub School of Law at Pace University and a licensed attorney in New York. His undergraduate degree is from Morehouse College, an HBCU in Atlanta, and he received his JD from Georgetown Law. He has worked in various social justice-related capacities, including as a public defender at the Neighborhood Defender Service of Harlem, Counsel to the Justice Program and Director of the Community-Oriented Defender Network at the Brennan Center for Justice, and the first-ever Supervising Attorney for the Legal Aid Society’s Anti-Gun Violence Initiative. He has served at the New York City Law Department as the Executive Assistant for Government Policy, and became the Department’s first-ever Chief of Staff. He was the lead attorney for the City in the monitorships of the NYPD (the Floyd case, Stop & Frisk) and the NYC Dept. of Corrections (use of force) from 2014–2019. He also oversaw the Law Department’s Family Court Division’s delinquency and child support practice during the Raise the Age transition. He has served as Senior Consultant for Justice Policy at the NYC Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice, where his focus was on NYC’s various police reform efforts, centered around executing legislation and executive orders passed in the wake of the George Floyd/Breona Taylor protests, as well as other injustices.
His experience focuses on criminal trial practice, criminal justice policy reform—especially racial justice issues—including restorative justice-focused efforts in police reform.
Education
- BA, Morehouse College
- JD, Georgetown University Law Center