John Farmer is a University Professor of Law at Rutgers University and was the Director of the Eagleton Institute of Politics until 2023. He leads the Miller Center for Community Protection and Resilience (CPR), which is housed at and affiliated with Eagleton and Rutgers Law School. He is the former dean of Rutgers School of Law – Newark, Attorney General of New Jersey, and Chief Counsel to Governor Christine Todd Whitman. He served as senior counsel and team leader for the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (commonly known as the 9/11 Commission) and authored The Ground Truth: The Untold Story of America Under Attack on 9/11, a reconsideration of the government’s 9/11 response in light of its response to Hurricane Katrina.
Professor Farmer began his career as a law clerk to Associate Justice Alan B. Handler of the New Jersey Supreme Court. He then worked as a litigation associate at Riker, Danzig, Scherer, Hyland & Perretti LLP before joining the Office of the U.S. Attorney in Newark. In 1993 he received the U.S. Attorney General’s Special Achievement Award for Sustained Performance. He was a partner in the white collar crime and internal investigations group at K&L Gates and in 2007 became a founding partner of the law firm Arseneault, Whipple, Farmer, Fassett and Azzarello, LLP. He is a frequent contributor to the Star-Ledger and the New York Times, serves on the board of the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice, and is a former member of the New Jersey Governor’s Ethics Advisory Board. He received his B.A. from Georgetown University and his J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center. He joined the Board of The Fund for New Jersey in 2018.
