Denise E. O'Donnell
Denise E. O'Donnell
Deputy Secretary for Public Safety/ Commissioner, NYS Division of Criminal Justice Services
As Governor Paterson’s Deputy Secretary for Public Safety, Denise E. O'Donnell oversees all homeland security and criminal justice agencies, including the Division of Criminal Justice Services, the Office of Homeland Security, the Division of State Police, the Department of Correctional Services, the Division of Parole, the Division of Probation and Correctional Alternatives, the Division of Military and Naval Affairs, the State Emergency Management Office, the Crime Victims Board, the Office for the Prevention of Domestic Violence, and the State Commission of Correction.
Deputy Secretary O’Donnell also serves as Commissioner of the Division of Criminal Justice Services and, in that role, operates a multi-function criminal justice support agency with a variety of responsibilities, ranging from the collection and analysis of statewide crime data, to the operation of the DNA databank and criminal fingerprint file to the administration of the state's Sex Offender Registry. She also chairs the New York State Commission on Sentencing Reform, the Forensic Science Commission and the New York State Motor Vehicle Theft and Insurance Fraud Prevention Board.
A native of Western New York, Ms. O’Donnell was the first person in her family to graduate from college. She went on to obtain a master’s degree in social work from the State University of New York at Buffalo and spent a decade in the trenches, focusing on child abuse and neglect, substance abuse and community mental health issues.
Ms. O'Donnell enrolled in law school in 1978. While studying at the University at Buffalo School of Law, Ms. O'Donnell worked as a legal assistant for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) on a landmark school desegregation case. She graduated summa cum laude in 1982 and spent the next three years as law clerk to Appellate Division, Fourth Department, Justice M. Dolores Denman.
In 1985, Ms. O'Donnell accepted a position as an assistant United States Attorney in the Western District of New York, where she prosecuted a wide array of criminal cases ranging from drug offenses to political corruption. She was promoted to appellate chief in 1990 and named First Assistant U.S. Attorney in 1993.
As first assistant, Ms. O'Donnell worked on a national investigation that developed crucial evidence against Timothy J. McVeigh, who was convicted of orchestrating the 1995 bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building. She also created a multi-agency task force to aggressively prosecute gun crimes in Western New York. Her skill at bringing diverse law enforcement agencies together to focus on a common mission proved crucial in the case of James Kopp, an international fugitive eventually captured and convicted of killing Dr. Barnett A. Slepian, a provider of reproductive services in the Buffalo area.
Ms. O'Donnell was appointed United States Attorney by President Bill Clinton in 1997 and became the first woman ever to hold the position of top federal prosecutor in upstate New York. She served as Vice-Chair of the U.S. Attorney General's Advisory Committee in Washington, D.C., where she was a member of the Investigations & Intelligence, Northern Border and Civil Rights sub-committees. In her role as chief federal prosecutor for the 17 counties in the Western District of New York, Ms. O'Donnell helped establish a program to prevent housing discrimination and was instrumental in establishing the first Hate Crimes Task Force in Western New York.
After leaving federal government in 2001, Ms. O'Donnell became a litigation partner at Hodgson Russ LLP, one of the nation's oldest law firms. At Hodgson Russ, she concentrated on government regulatory investigations, health care law, civil fraud and false claims act litigation, money laundering and financial crimes and corporate ethics and compliance.
Deputy Secretary O’Donnell has taught at the SUNY Buffalo School of Law and served as a lecturer with the U.S. Department of Justice Office of Legal Education. She was inducted into the Western New York Women's Hall of Fame and has received numerous awards and honors, including the New York State Bar Association's Ruth G. Shapiro Award and the State Bar’s Award for Excellence in Public Service.
Ms. O'Donnell was a candidate for New York Attorney General from 2005- 2006. Governor Eliot Spitzer appointed her Commissioner of the Division of Criminal Justice Services in 2007 and she was unanimously confirmed by the State Senate. Ms. O’Donnell was appointed Deputy Secretary for Public Safety by Governor David A. Paterson in 2009. In that position she oversees eleven public safety agencies with an annual budget of $4.7 billion and a combined workforce of 42,000 employees comprising 19 percent of the state workforce.