Henry M. “Hank” Greenberg of Albany, a shareholder at Greenberg Traurig, LLP, became president of the New York State Bar Association on June 1, 2019. He spent the previous year as president-elect and chair of the House of Delegates.
Greenberg concentrates his practice on civil litigation, criminal and civil investigations, and regulatory and administrative law. He is a former counsel to then-New York State Attorney General (now Governor) Andrew M. Cuomo, general counsel for the New York State Department of Health, and a federal prosecutor. Among other government posts, he also served as a law clerk to then-Associate Judge (later Chief Judge) Judith S. Kaye of the New York. Court of Appeals.
Previously, he served in NYSBA’s House of Delegates as vice-president of the Third Judicial District, and chaired the Committee on the New York State Constitution, the Committee on Court Structure and Operations, the Legislative Policy Committee, the Steven C. Krane Special Committee on Law School Loan Assistance for Public Interest, and the Committee on Attorneys in Public Service. He chairs the New York State Third Department Judicial Screening Committee, serves on the statewide Judicial Screening Committee, and is counsel to the New York State Commission on Judicial Nomination, which nominates New York’s Court of Appeals judges.
He is a vice chair of the Historical Society of the New York Courts, a life fellow of the New York Bar Foundation, a fellow of the American Bar Foundation, and a member of the New York State Judicial Institute on Professionalism in the Law and the Advisory Group of the New York State and Federal Judicial Council.
A frequent lecturer, Greenberg has been published numerous times on a wide range of legal subjects. He is a co-editor of the book Judith S. Kaye in Her Own Words: Reflections on Life and the Law, with Selected Judicial Opinions and Articles. In April 2019, Greenberg joined an impressive group of individuals from the highest levels of the profession who have delivered the Charles Evans Hughes Memorial Lecture, the annual event that honors Hughes’s service to the nation and devotion to the law. Greenberg’s lecture was titled “Charles Evans Hughes & The Role of New York’s Organized Bar at a Time of Crisis for the Rule of Law.”
Greenberg earned his law degree from Syracuse University College of Law, cum laude, and his undergraduate degree from the University of Chicago, with honors.