Noel Hillman

The Hon. Noel L. Hillman (Ret.) leads the Gibbons Alternative Dispute Resolution practice, a burgeoning focus area of the firm’s Business & Commercial Litigation Group. His nearly two decades-long service as a United States District Judge for the District of New Jersey lends invaluable perspective and insight to clients as they move through the dispute resolution process. Judge Hillman has experience in the areas of employment law, corporate law, constitutional law, education law, customs law, anti-money laundering, anti­corruption, trade regulation, defamation, antitrust law, trade secrets, patents, copyright, and trademark law. Judge Hillman also provides counsel to the firm’s White Collar & Investigations Group.

Judge Hillman was appointed in 2006 by President George W. Bush, after unanimous confirmation by the U.S. Senate (98-0) and receiving the ABA’s highest ranking (“unanimously well-qualified”). He joined the bench after serving in several leadership roles in the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) over 14 years, both in Washington, DC and New Jersey. These included, with Main Justice in Washington, DC: Senior Counsel to the Assistant Attorney General, Criminal Division; and Chief of the Criminal Division’s Public Integrity Section; and with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of New Jersey: Acting Attorney-in-Charge of the Camden Office; Customs Crimes Coordinator; and Deputy Chief of the Criminal Division in Newark, New Jersey. During his time at Main Justice, he oversaw the DOJ’s anti-corruption, election crimes, and campaign finance prosecutions nationwide, serving as lead counsel, co-lead counsel, or acting U.S. Attorney in some of the DOJ’s most important, impactful, and sensitive national security, bribery, and campaign finance prosecutions. As a member of the Senior Executive Service and one of the DOJ’s most senior career prosecutors, he also served in several important leadership and policy roles in the executive branch, including: member of the Advisory Board of the Election Assistance Commission; Counsel to the Integrity Committee of the President’s Council on Integrity and Efficiency, overseeing the inspector general community; and member of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Criminal Undercover Operations Review Committee, acting, along with other Criminal Division section chiefs, to ensure the FBI’s adherence to the Constitution and DOJ internal guidelines in its most sensitive criminal investigations.

In addition to presiding over nearly 100 jury and bench trials to verdict in almost two decades as a United States District Judge, his committee assignments included chairing the Third Circuit Model Civil Jury Instructions Committee and the District of New Jersey’s Criminal Law Committee and serving on the Third Circuit Committee on Re-Entry Courts and the Jury Trial Subgroup of the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts’ COVID-19 National Task Force.

Judge Hillman has significant international experience in criminal law as well, especially as an anti-corruption authority. He served as a State Department delegate to the Global Forums, anti-corruption conferences in Korea and Brazil, and was a member of both the U.S. negotiation team for the United Nations Convention Against Corruption (UNCAC) in Austria and a UNCAC implementation team in Italy. He also participated in Justice Department training missions to Ukraine, regarding non-bank money laundering, and Serbia, concerning corporate criminal liability; assisted the Council of Europe on member-state compliance with the Group of States Against Corruption treaty, conducting compliance reviews of Ireland and Turkey; and provided technical assistance on judicial integrity to public and educational entities in South and Central America.

He has taught as an adjunct professor at several leading law schools and lectured and published on a diverse array of subject matters, including sentencing law and policy, artificial intelligence, trial advocacy, public corruption, campaign finance, money laundering, bank fraud, securities fraud, customs law, international trade, export and arms control, copyright, music publishing, antitrust, and related topics.