Greenburgh Appoints Tarrytown Public Defender As Town Judge

By Barrett Seaman—

At its May 28 meeting, the Greenburgh Town Board voted to appoint Lia Rodriguez of Tarrytown as a Town Judge, replacing the retiring Judge Bonnie L. Orden. She joins Judges Delores Scott Brathwaite and Judge Erin McGoey on the Greenburgh bench.

Soon-to-be Judge Rodriguez has spent two decades as a public defender, serving as the supervising attorney for the Legal Aid Society’s Criminal Defense Practice Trial Division, mostly in the Bronx. A graduate of the University of Michigan, she has a law degree from the Florida State University College of Law. She clerked for Circuit Court Judge Rex Barbas in Tampa, Florida at the start of her legal career and later worked for Ambassador Bill Richardson at the U. S. Mission to the United Nations.

According to Town Supervisor Paul Feiner, Rodriguez has also spent time “addressing the needs of the indigent–those with food and housing insecurity. She is a former Board member of New Yorkers Against Gun Violence and has been active in national lobbying campaigns with the Brady campaign.”

Her judgeship will prevent her from continuing her work as a public defender, which she allows is “really a full-time job.” The town judgeship, she says, “will give me a little bit of a break…though obviously I’m on a learning curve.”

The Town Judges handle a range of criminal and civil cases, including landlord-tenant disputes, small claims and environmental law violations—as well as jury and bench trials.

Rodriguez is the mother of a sixth grader at Sleepy Hollow Middle School and a fifth grader at Washington Irving. She will take her seat on the bench on July 7^th.

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