Hakeem Jeffries

Hakeem currently serves on the House Education and the Workforce Committee, including the subcommittees on Higher Education and Workforce Training and on Health, Employment, Labor, and Pensions and the House Judiciary Committee, including the subcommittees on Courts, Intellectual Property and the Internet and on Regulatory Reform, Commercial and Antitrust Law. As a second-term Congressman, Hakeem has already proven to be a real leader of bipartisan cooperation. He played a key role in advancing the Innovation Act, a patent reform bill, through the House chamber in November 2013. He also is actively involved on the Judiciary Committee Task Force on Overcriminalization, made up of five Democrats and five Republicans seeking to reform the federal criminal justice system. Hakeem has been a difference maker at the local level, working hard to secure federal assistance for communities devastated by Hurricane Sandy, protecting essential health care opportunities for Central Brooklyn residents and leading efforts to strengthen the relationship between the NYPD and communities of color. He has consistently spoken out on the need to balance effective law enforcement on the one hand and a healthy respect for civil liberties and equal protection under the law on the other. Consequently, Hakeem has joined his colleagues in urging the Justice Department to conduct investigations into the constitutionality of stop-and-frisk and 'broken windows' policing tactics in New York City and across the nation. Before being elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, Hakeem served for six years in the New York State Assembly, where he championed many of the same civil liberty issues he continues to promote today. Prior to his career in public service, Hakeem practiced law at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP, and served as litigation counsel for Viacom Inc. and CBS. Hakeem received his bachelor's degree at the State University of New York at Binghamton, earned a master's degree in public policy from Georgetown University and graduated magna cum laude at the New York University School of Law, where he also served on the Law Review. Following the completion of law school, Hakeem clerked for the Honorable Harold Baer Jr. of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. Hakeem was born in Brooklyn, is a product of New York City's public school system, and currently lives in Prospect Heights with his wife and two sons.