The Hon. Abraham Clott is an Acting Justice of the New York County Supreme Court, Criminal Term in the First Judicial District of New York. He was appointed to the Supreme Court in 2011 by the Hon. Ann Pfau, former Chief Administrative Judge of the State of New York.
Justice Clott has also served as a judge for the New York County Criminal Court since 2004. He first served as an interim judge for the Criminal Court, until his appointment to serve as a full-time Criminal Court judge by former Mayor Michael Bloomberg in 2007. Justice Clott was subsequently reappointed to the Criminal Court bench in 2009 and again in 2019 by Mayor Bill de Blasio.
He received his A.B. from the University of Chicago in 1977. Clott went on to earn his J.D. from New York University School of Law in 1980.
He began his legal career as a law clerk for the Hon. M. Joseph Blumenfeld with the U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut. After completing his clerkship, Clott then joined the law firm Sonnenschein, Carlin, Nath, and Rosenthal, where he practiced as an attorney from 1981 until 1983.
At that time, Clott joined the Legal Aid Society, where he first worked as an attorney in its Criminal Appeals Bureau until moving to the Federal Defender Division of the Appeals Bureau in 1987. In 1992, Clott then served in the Federal Defender Division for the Eastern District of New York until becoming a Criminal Court judge in 2004.
His memberships have included serving as the chairman of the Board of Trustees of The Society for the Advancement of Judaism and a member of the Board of Governors of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College/Jewish Reconstructionist Communities. Judge Clott has also been a member of the International Association of Gay and Lesbian Judges.