Patrick J. Fitzgerald is a lawyer in Chicago, Illinois. After practicing civil law, Fitzgerald became an Assistant United States Attorney in New York City in 1988. He handled drug-trafficking cases and in 1993 assisted in the prosecution of Mafia figure John Gambino, a boss of the Gambino crime family. In 1994, Fitzgerald became the prosecutor in the case against Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahmanand 11 others charged in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. In 1996, Fitzgerald became the National Security Coordinator for the Office of the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. There, he served on a team of prosecutors investigating Osama bin Laden.
He joined, as partner, the Chicago office of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom as of October 29, 2012. For more than a decade, until June 30, 2012, Fitzgerald was the United States Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois. As special counsel for the U.S. Department of Justice Office of Special Counsel, Fitzgerald was the federal prosecutor in charge of the investigation of the Valerie Plame Affair, which led to the prosecution and conviction in 2007 of Vice President Dick Cheney‘s chief of staff Scooter Libby for perjury.
As a federal prosecutor, Fitzgerald led a number of high-profile investigations, including ones that led to convictions of Illinois Governors Rod Blagojevich and George Ryan, media mogul Conrad Black, several aides to Chicago Mayor Richard Daley in the Hired Truck Program, and Chicago detective and torturer Jon Burge.