Maurene Comey

Maurene Comey is a Partner in Patterson Belknap’s Litigation department and a member of its White Collar Defense and Investigations team. Ms. Comey’s practice includes the representation of individuals and companies in sensitive and high-stakes white collar criminal defense matters, internal investigations, and complex civil litigation.   

Prior to joining the firm, Ms. Comey served for nearly a decade as an Assistant United States Attorney in the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York. Most recently she served as a Senior Trial Counsel and previously held leadership roles as co-chief of the Public Corruption Unit and the Violent and Organized Crime Unit. As a supervisor, Ms. Comey oversaw more than 20 Assistant U.S. Attorneys handling investigations, prosecutions, and trials involving bank fraud, bribery, campaign finance, extortion, the Foreign Agent Registration Act, money laundering, racketeering, sanctions violations, sex trafficking, tax evasion, wire fraud, and other offenses. She worked closely with federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies, as well as Department of Justice components—such as the Public Integrity Section, National Security Division, and Violent Crime and Racketeering Section—to coordinate major investigations and litigation.  

Ms. Comey’s extensive litigation experience includes handling 11 jury trials, supervising 17 additional jury trials, and briefing or arguing 14 appeals before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. In her leadership roles, she supervised numerous complex and sensitive matters, including the investigation, prosecution, and trial of a former senator for bribery and acting as a foreign agent; the investigation and prosecution of dozens of New York City employees, resulting in the largest number of federal bribery charges ever brought in a single day; the prosecution of a former high-ranking supervisor of a federal law enforcement agency for sanctions violations; and the investigation and prosecution of a multinational media company’s CFO for money laundering and bank fraud. In her work as a line prosecutor, Ms. Comey handled some of the highest profile criminal prosecutions in the country, such as the prosecution of a former financier for child sex abuse; the trial of a former socialite for abuse of minors; the prosecution of a former OB-GYN for sexually abusing dozens of patients; the trial of a former police officer for a quadruple murder; and the trial of an entertainment mogul for sex abuse.  

Ms. Comey received the DOJ Director’s Award for Superior Performance by a Litigative Team and was considered one of the top trial lawyers of the Manhattan prosecutor’s office.

Before joining the U.S. Attorney's Office, Ms. Comey served as a law clerk to the Hon. Loretta A. Preska of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. Ms. Comey was previously a litigation associate at an international law firm in New York.