Former New Jersey Attorney General Anne Milgram, now a professor and scholar-in-residence at New York University School of Law, is the newest member of the John Jay College Foundation Board of Trustees.
Prior to joining NYU, Anne Milgram served as Vice President of Criminal Justice for the Laura and John Arnold Foundation. Milgram championed the use of smart data, analytics, and technology as a way to reinvent the criminal justice system. At the Arnold Foundation, she led the creation, development and national implementation of a new pretrial risk assessment tool to provide judges with more information for when they decide whether to release or jail people who have been arrested. In addition to developing the Public Safety Risk Assessment tool, Milgram spearheaded more than $55 million in philanthropic grants and operational projects. This included significant efforts to: shift the national focus from the back end of the criminal justice system (probation, parole, and reentry) to the front end of the system (pretrial); expand the research base for criminal justice; create state and local criminal data warehouses; work cross-sector to combine crime, health, education, housing and social service data to identify and test new areas of intervention and diversion; and develop a broader strategy for national criminal justice reform.
Milgram served as New Jersey’s Attorney General from June 2007 to January 2010, where she headed the 9,000-person Department of Law and Public Safety. Milgram became Attorney General after serving from February 2006 to June 2007 as First Assistant Attorney General. As Attorney General, Milgram supervised eight divisions and multiple commissions and boards, including: the Division of Criminal Justice; the Division of Law; the Division of Consumer Affairs; the Bureau of Securities; the Division of Civil Rights; the Juvenile Justice Commission; the Division of Gaming Enforcement; the Division of Highway Traffic Safety; the Racing Commission; and the Division of Alcoholic Beverage Control. Milgram also supervised the Division of the New Jersey State Police and its 3,000 sworn members and the Camden Police Department.
As the state’s Chief Law Enforcement Officer, she was responsible for overseeing and directing the 21 New Jersey county prosecutors and the approximately 30,000 state and local law enforcement officers. She spearheaded investigations into street gangs, public corruption, gun violence and trafficking, securities fraud, and mortgage fraud. She also implemented a statewide program to improve public safety through prevention of crime, criminal justice and law enforcement reform, and re-entry programs and services. As Attorney General, Milgram oversaw affirmative and defensive civil litigation for the state, providing legal representation to all state departments and agencies in approximately 25,000 civil matters each year. She also served as a member of the US Attorney General’s Executive Working Group on Criminal Justice and as a co-chair of the National Association of Attorneys General Criminal Law Committee.
Milgram received her law degree from NYU School of Law, and also holds degrees from Rutgers College and the University of Cambridge.