The Hon. Leslie G. Leach is a Justice of the Queens County Supreme Court, Criminal Term in the Eleventh Judicial District of New York. He was elected to the Supreme Court bench in 2015 and certificated to the post in 2017.
His judicial career began in 1993 when he was first appointed to serve as a judge for the Criminal Court of the City of New York by former Mayor David Dinkins. He was later reappointed to the Criminal Court bench by former Mayor Michael Bloomberg in 2002. During his tenure on the Criminal Court, Justice Leach was appointed to serve as an Acting Justice of the Queens County Supreme Court in 1995 and remained in that capacity until being elected to the same court in 2004. After the election, Justice Leach was appointed to serve as the Administrative Judge of the Eleventh Judicial District. He served as a Justice in Queens County for three years, before leaving the bench in 2007. He did not return to a judicial position until his election to Queens County Supreme Court in 2015.
During his first term on the Supreme Court bench, Justice Leach presided over the Queens Treatment Court.
Justice Leach graduated with his B.A. in economics from the City University of New York at Queens College in 1972. He also received an M.S. in labor studies from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst in 1974 and a J.D. from Columbia Law School in 1978.
Leach practiced as an associate at Jackson, Lewis, Schnitzler, and Krupman before joining the New York State Unified Court System in 1982. During his tenure there, he served as a law clerk with the New York City Criminal Court, the Supreme Court with the Hon. Dennis Edwards, Jr., as well as the Appellate Division First Department and the New York State Court of Appeals with the Hon. Fritz W. Alexander II. Leach remained with the Unified Court System until his appointment to the Criminal Court bench.
After his initial term as Justice of the Queens County Supreme Court, he was appointed to serve as an executive deputy attorney general for the Division of State Counsel by then-Attorney General Andrew Cuomo in 2007 and was later appointed by Governor-Elect Cuomo to serve as his appointments secretary in 2010. Leach remained in that capacity until he was elected to his second term as Justice in Queens County in 2015.
He has also taught as an adjunct professor at York College in Jamaica and at St. Joseph’s College in Brooklyn.
In 2016, he was appointed to serve on the New York State Commission on Judicial Conduct by the Hon. Janet DiFiore, Chief Judge of the State of New York.
His memberships have included serving as chair of the Special Committee to Encourage Judicial Service and the Council on Judicial Administration at the Association of the Bar of the City of New York
Justice Leach was born in Brooklyn, New York.