Andrew G. Celli, Jr. is a founding partner of the law firm Emery Celli Brinckerhoff Abady Ward & Maazel LLP.
Mr. Celli, a trial and appellate lawyer, represents individuals and institutions in constitutional, civil rights, and commercial matters in courts around the country. Often appearing on behalf of governments and public officials, businesses whose interests intersect with public policy, or individuals challenging government action or in disputes with powerful institutions, Mr. Celli uses his legal skills and experience in government and politics to provide advice, counsel, and effective representation of clients in court – and to make change.
In his civil rights practice, Mr. Celli represents plaintiffs in cases involving police misconduct/excessive force, free speech, voting rights, access to the courts, and sexual assault and harassment. He represented Alan Dershowitz in his successful effort to unseal court files in the Jeffrey Epstein matter. As Special Counsel to the City of Rochester, he investigated and issued a lengthy public report on the failure of Rochester’s Mayor and other government officials to promptly disclose the death in police custody of Daniel Prude, an unarmed, mentally ill man. And he has represented the New York City Council in six separation-of-powers cases against three different mayors, including most recently, in cases challenging Mayor Adams’ refusal to implement laws designed to alleviate homelessness, and an executive order permitting Immigration and Customs Enforcement to open an office on Rikers Island on derogation of New York’s “sanctuary city” law.
In 2024, Mr. Celli successfully represented the City Club of New York in its case to compel the implementation of congestion pricing. And, this year, he helped win a preliminary injunction for Voice of America journalists and staffers in their efforts to prevent the Administration from dismantling that federal agency.
Mr. Celli also provides ongoing advice and counsel to for-profit companies, not-for-profit institutions, and quasi-governmental agencies including the The Doe Fund, Global Strategy Group, Empire State Development Corporation, Atlantic Development Group, and the Hunt’s Point Produce Market Cooperative Association.
From 1999 to 2003, Mr. Celli served as Chief of the Civil Rights Bureau in the office of New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer. There, he led that office’s first-ever investigation of the NYPD (the Attorney General’s Report “The New York City Police Department’s ‘Stop & Frisk’ Practices”), and his work established the precedent that the Office of the Attorney General has authority to sue to remedy systemic police misconduct (People by Spitzer v. Town of Wallkill).
Mr. Celli served as a commissioner and vice-chair of the New York State Temporary Commission on Lobbying and of the New York State Commission on Public Integrity (2004 through 2011), and he was a Wasserstein Public Interest Fellow at the Harvard Law School (2012). He serves on the boards of Grand Street Settlement and Reprieve US.
Mr. Celli has written and lectured widely on civil rights and civil liberties issues, appearing at the National Association of Attorneys General, Harvard Law School, New York University School of Law, Albany Law School, the Association of the Bar of the City of New York, and as a legal commentator on Court TV.
Before joining Richard Emery in practice in 1993, Mr. Celli clerked for the Hon. Charles P. Sifton on the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York and was a litigation associate at Cravath Swaine & Moore. He earned his J.D. from New York University School of Law in 1990.