David E. Patton

David Patton has been the Executive Director of the Federal Defenders of New York for the Southern and Eastern Districts of New York since July 2011. From 2002 to 2008, he worked at the Federal Defenders as a trial attorney in the Manhattan office.
From 2008-2010, he was an Assistant Professor of Law at the University of Alabama where he taught Criminal Law and directed the Criminal Defense Clinic. From 2010 to 2011, he was a Visiting Associate Professor at Stanford Law School and founded the schools first trial-level criminal defense clinic. He currently teaches Professional Responsibility in Criminal Law as an Adjunct Professor of Law at N.Y.U. Mr. Patton is a member of the American College of Trial Lawyers and the American Law Institute. Among other publications, he is the author of The Structure of Federal Public Defense: A Call for Independence, 102 CORNELL L. REV. 101 (2017) and Federal Public Defense in an Age of Inquisition, 122 YALE L.J. 100 (2013). Since 2008, Mr. Patton has been a faculty member for Gideons Promise, a non-profit organization dedicated to training new public defenders and fostering a community of client-centered lawyers.
Mr. Patton is a graduate of the University of Virginia School of Law, where he served as an editor of the Virginia Law Review. He clerked for the Honorable Claude Hilton of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. Prior to joining the Federal Defenders in 2002, he was an associate at the law firm Sullivan & Cromwell.