Debevoise & Plimpton LLP partner and former federal judge and prosecutor John Gleeson has authored the just published “The Gotti Wars: Taking Down America's Most Notorious Mobster,” a memoir describing Judge Gleeson’s experiences prosecuting the nationally famous Gambino family crime boss in two celebrated racketeering-murder trials.

In the book, which Esquire magazine has named “One of the Best Books of the Year (So Far),” describing it as both “riveting” and “electrifying,” and which both The New York Times and the New York Post have favorably spotlighted, Judge Gleeson chronicles John Gotti’s meteoric rise to power and his equally dramatic downfall. In 1987, Judge Gleeson served as junior prosecutor in the first racketeering trial of Gotti. Jury tampering resulted in the mobster’s acquittal. In 1992, he led a second murder investigation and trial—one that finally sent Gotti to prison for life and had the effect of dismantling the entire mob.

Judge Gleeson is a trial and appellate lawyer and company advisor who was a federal judge for 22 years before joining Debevoise in 2016. He is a litigation partner in the White Collar & Regulatory Defense and Commercial Litigation Groups. A fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers, Judge Gleeson focuses his practice on white collar defense, complex civil litigation, internal investigations, and dispute resolution.