Back in the Big Apple Harriett Galvin returns to the DA’s Office

10/12/2015

When Harriett Galvin 1964 moved back to New York City in January 2015, she returned to familiar surroundings in more ways than one!

Harriett is an Assistant District Attorney in Manhattan (New York County District Attorney’s Office), a job she held nearly 40 years ago.

"It was the first job I had upon graduation from Brooklyn Law School in 1976, but after four years, I left and did a lot of other things," Harriett said.

Among them was earning a Master of Law (LL.M) from the Yale Law School.

From 1981 to 1985, Harriett joined the faculty at The Ohio State University College of Law, where she taught Evidence and Criminal Procedure and designed a clinical program in which students prosecuted misdemeanor cases in Delaware, Ohio, under her supervision. In 1985, she moved to Miami, Fla., where she had a 28-year career as an Assistant United States Attorney, writing appellate briefs and arguing cases before the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. Harriett raised her children in Miami: Sarah, 28, now lives in Boston, and Jenny, 25, resides in New York City.

"After my children were grown and moved north, I decided I wanted to live in New York to be near my family and many old friends," Harriett said, noting her daughters, brother, and niece are in the northeast, and her sister, Jane Tamarkin (Hamden Hall alumna 1960), lives in New Haven.

"We're a close family," Harriett said. "I love being back in New York, going to theatre, concerts, ballets, and museums, and it’s wonderful to back at the DA's Office under the leadership of Cyrus Vance Jr. It is a very special office, often called the finest DA's Office in the country."

In addition to other duties, Harriett is combining her experiences as a law professor and prosecutor to teach a legal writing workshop to other prosecutors in the office.

As Harriett enjoys a fulfilling professional life, she also takes time to celebrate the foundation of her education at Hamden Hall. Harriett celebrated her 50th Hamden Hall reunion in 2014, and she enjoyed catching up with classmates. Prior to last year’s October events on campus, classmate Susie Robertson Emerson rented a summer home on the Connecticut shoreline and hosted a lobster bake. The event drew many classmates together to reminiscence about their days under the pines. Harriett, who was living in Miami at the time, came up from Florida and was so pleased to catch up with her classmates. Several others from her class also came from long distances, including Susie, who lives in Las Vegas; Janice Cooper, who lives outside D.C. in Falls Church, Va.; Jeff Goldman of Boynton Beach, Fla.; and Marilyn Smith Herbst, who lives in La Jolla, Calif.

"It's important to me to reconnect with old friends and to maintain my relationships," Harriett said. "They are of a different quality than the connections you form later in life, when you may be married, busy professionally, raising children. It also gives one's life a continuity and meaning.”

Although this fall is not Harriett’s reunion year, she plans to return to campus Oct. 16 to see her sister, Jane Tamarkin 1960, in action. Jane, cofounder of Theatre 4, is directing a workshop production in the Taylor Performing Arts Center. We look forward to Harriett’s return!

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Back in the Big Apple Harriett Galvin returns to the DA’s Office