Partner

Paul G. Nittoly is a partner in the firm's Commercial Litigation and Labor & Employment Practice Groups, partner-in-charge of public interest matters, partner and co-chair of the Pro Bono Committee, and is a member of the White Collar Criminal Defense and Corporate Investigations Team.  Paul is an experienced trial attorney who practices both criminal and civil litigation concentrating on corporate internal investigations, labor and employment law matters on behalf of management, and white collar criminal defense.  He has represented a variety of corporations and individuals in defense of employment related matters including wrongful termination, discrimination and sexual harassment before federal courts, state courts and administrative agencies.  He has also represented corporations, their officers and employees in investigations before federal and state grand juries and in defense of criminal matters in the federal and state trial courts.

In General.  He received his bachelor's degree from Rutgers College in 1970 and his J.D. from New York Law School in 1973.  He lectures and writes on a variety of legal topics and was a member of the editorial advisory board of the Corporate Criminal Liability Reporter.  His publication, “Environmental Criminal Cases:  The Dawn of a New Era,” appeared in the Seton Hall Law Review, Volume Twenty-One, Number Four.  He is also the author of two book chapters in the text Readings in White-Collar Crime.

Paul is a fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers and the American Bar Foundation. He is also an active member of the American Bar Association’s White Collar Crime Committee and a former co-chair of the ABA Litigation Section’s Subcommittee on Environmental Crimes.  Paul is a member of the Labor and Employment Law Sections of the American Bar Association and New Jersey State Bar Association and was a member of the U.S. Sentencing Commission’s Practitioners’ Advisory Group (PAG) and a faculty member of the National Institute for Trial Advocacy.  He was the recipient of the 2009 Douglas Eakeley Award from the Legal Services Foundation of Essex County and recognized in Chambers 2011, 2010 and 2009 for his competence in white collar criminal defense and corporate investigations.

Before he joined Drinker Biddle & Reath’s predecessor firm, Shanley & Fisher, in 1979, he served as an assistant prosecutor in Essex County where he was senior trial attorney responsible for numerous high profile criminal prosecutions and investigations.  He became a member of the firm in 1984 and is certified by the New Jersey Supreme Court Board on Trial Attorney Certification as both a civil and criminal trial attorney.  He served as master and past president of the C. Willard Heckel Chapter of the American Inns of Court and as chair/past president of the Trial Attorneys of New Jersey.  He has also served as an elected member of the American Board of Trial Advocates and a faculty member of the inaugural ABOTA Trial College at Princeton University in June 2010.  He is also a past president of the Essex County Bar Association, president of the Legal Services Foundation of Essex County and member of the board of trustees of the Association of the Federal Bar of New Jersey.  Recently, he was appointed to the board of directors for the Volunteer Lawyers for Justice.  Paul received the Samuel S. Saiber Professional Achievement Award from the Essex County Bar Association recognizing his 15 years of pro bono representation in litigation, which resulted in the renovation and restoration of the historic Old Essex County Courthouse in Newark, N.J., which reopened in March 2005.