John Spagna’s unique experience enables him to handle a wide variety of matters for his clients. John is a regulatory enforcement and litigation attorney with extensive government, in-house and private practice experience. John has handled cross-border litigations, white-collar defense cases, and internal investigations as both external and in-house counsel. John has also managed complex matrimonial and custody matters for clients throughout New York.

Prior to joining Clayman Rosenberg Kirshner & Linder LLP, John served as Senior Counsel for an international asset management company. In that role, John managed the company’s significant litigations as well as any government-facing investigations. John was also responsible for developing strategies to mitigate legal, regulatory and reputational risk in all litigation and regulatory enforcement actions.

John has represented clients in commercial disputes and class action litigations. He also managed several internal investigations on behalf of his clients involving the handling of material non-public information and allegations of insider trading. He has represented companies, financial institutions, and individuals under criminal investigation by the Department of Justice and in enforcement matters before the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, federal and state bank regulators, state attorneys general, and self-regulatory organizations.

As a family law attorney, John was often assigned the knottiest and most contentious custody cases because of his extensive courtroom experience. John specialized in representing clients who had been denied custody of their children because of false allegations made by opposing parties.

In addition to his work in the private sector, John is a seasoned prosecutor, who conducted complex investigations with zeal, imagination and determination at both the county and state level. As a line assistant in the Office of the Special Narcotics Prosecutor and then as a member of the elite Rackets Bureau at the New York County District Attorney’s Office, John supervised teams of attorneys, investigators and paralegals in white-collar and organized crime investigations involving fraud, racketeering, official corruption, money laundering, bribery and homicide. John prosecuted over 200 felony cases and conducted 12 felony trials and over 50 hearings in New York Supreme Court.

As Special Counsel to the Criminal Division of the New York State Attorney General’s Office, John led groundbreaking and novel prosecutions in the real estate industry. As a result of these prosecutions, John was appointed to lead the Real Estate Enforcement Unit that focused on complaints involving bank fraud, deceptive lending practices, deed theft, tenant harassment, and frauds committed upon city and state agencies. John also helped draft the recent changes to New York’s Harassment of Rent Regulated Tenants statute.

John has worked for two New York law firms: Cahill, Gordon & Reindel, LLP and Kasowitz, Benson, Torres & Friedman LLP.  John is also a volunteer firefighter in Hastings on Hudson.

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