Lori Grifa Nominated by Gov. Chris Christie

Gov. Chris Christie has nominated former prosecutor Lori Grifa to take over the Community Affairs Department. The nomination is subject to Senate confirmation.

Lori Grifa, a Montclair resident, is a member of Wolff & Samson’s Government and Regulatory Affairs Group. She practices in the areas of administrative, regulatory and government affairs, and handles commercial and employment litigation. She represents clients before the New Jersey Departments of Banking and Insurance, Education, Environmental Protection, Labor, Transportation and Treasury, as well as the majority of the state’s professional licensing boards.

Lori brings deep experience in both the public and private sectors to her law practice at the firm, and applies that knowledge to solve the problems faced by licensed and regulated businesses.
From 2002-2003, Lori served as chief of staff to New Jersey Attorney General David Samson. In that capacity, she was responsible for managing the New Jersey Department of Law & Public Safety, a department comprised of more than 9,500 employees (including 800 attorneys), as well as for the civil representation of the State of New Jersey and overseeing the state’s criminal prosecution efforts.

Before joining Wolff & Samson, she was a special assistant district attorney in the Homicide Investigation Unit of the New York County District Attorney’s Office for two years and was a senior assistant district attorney in the Office of the Kings County (Brooklyn) District Attorney from 1989-1997, where she specialized in homicide and gang-related prosecutions.

Lori received appointments by the chief justice of the New Jersey Supreme Court to a number of important committees, including the Committee for Women and the Courts and the State Domestic Violence Working Group. Most recently, she was appointed to the District V-A Attorney Ethics Committee for a four-year term that began in September 2008.

Lori is listed in The Best Lawyers in America in the area of Administrative Law and was named by NJBIZ in 2008 as one of New Jersey’s “Best 50 Women in Business." She has received Martindale Hubbell’s highest AV® rating.
A graduate of Boston College School of Law, Lori served as law clerk to Judge Elbert Tuttle of the Superior Court of Massachusetts. She also earned her B.A., cum laude, from Rutgers University, where she was a Henry Rutgers Thesis Scholar and member of Phi Beta Kappa.