WBY BILL PARRY
hen it came time to
select his own re-placement,
Queens
District Attorney
Richard Brown turned his office of nearly
30 years to “a great colleague and, more
important, a close and trusted friend.”
John M. Ryan, who served as Chief
Executive Assistant for the last 22 years,
was designated on March 7 to succeed
him on an interim basis until the next
district attorney is elected in November.
Brown announced he was stepping
down early due to health complications
related to his years-long fight with Par-kinson’s
Disease. He had announced
in January that he would not seek an
eighth term in the office he has held
since 1991.
Ryan began his career at the Queens
District Attorney’s office in 1972 as an
intern and became an assistant district
attorney in 1974 after graduating from
St. John’s University School of Law. Early
on, he handled the investigation of the
1975 bombing at LaGuardia Airport
that killed eleven people.
Additionally, Ryan prosecuted William
Morales, a suspected member of the Puer-to
Rican separatist group FALN, who was
convicted in connection with an explosion
at a Jackson Heights bomb factory.
In October 1979, he resigned to serve
as an Assistant Attorney General in
the New York State Department of
Law where, as a special prosecutor,
he brought the Tawana Brawley inves-tigation
to a just conclusion.
In 1991, shortly after Brown was ap-pointed
Queens County District Attorney
by then-Governor Mario Cuomo, Ryan
returned to the Queens DA’s office as
Chief of Investigations and, in 1997, was
promoted to Chief Assistant District At-torney,
a position he held until Thursday.
In 2016, Brown honored Ryan for
his “innumerable contributions” dur-ing
his long tenure at the Queens
DA’s office.
“As Chief Assistant, Jack’s con-tributions
to this office cannot be
measured by individual criminal cases,
although his input and influence can
be found on many, if not all, of the
major cases prosecuted in Queens
County over the last twenty-five
years,” Brown said. “His work has
broader ramifications, significantly
improving the quality of life of the
families residing in many Queens
12 MARCH 2019 I LIC COURIER I www.qns.com
communities and effectively making
these neighborhoods safer places in
which to live by adapting the office
to the crime-fighting needs of the di-verse
communities of the county and
seeing that the guilty are punished
for their crimes.”
A spokeswoman for the Queens
DA’s office said, “At this time Chief
Executive Assistant District Attorney
John Ryan’s only statement is that this
day belongs to the District Attorney
Richard A. Brown.”
Ryan will now finish the remaining
nine months of Brown’s term until he is
replaced by a newly elected district attor-ney
in January. There are currently seven
candidates competing in the June 25
Democratic primary, including Queens
Borough President Melinda Katz, City
Councilman Rory Lancman, former state
Supreme Court Justice Greg Lasak,
public defender Tiffany Caban, former
Queens prosecutor Mina Malik, former
state Attorney General’s Office prosecu-tor
Jose Nieves and attorney Betty Lugo.
Courtesy of Queens District Attorney's office
John M. Ryan (at left), shown receiving an award in 2016 from Queens District Attorney Richard A. Brown, is the new acting chief prosecutor for Queens.
What’s New
Meet John Ryan, the acting Queens
District Attorney taking the reins from Richard A. Brown
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