Trenton taps local attorney as new interim law director
TRENTON » He’s hoping to bridge the disconnect.
Wesley Bridges must rely on his roots and relationships in Trenton if he is to restore peace in the capital city. He is being tapped as acting law director, pending state approval, to replace the deposed John Morelli.
Bridges, a local talent and founder of the Trenton-based Bridges Law Group, has developed a reputation over more than a decade in practice as a bulldog litigator.
He told The Trentonian
in a phone interview Friday that he hopes to become a “trusted advisor” to council and the administration, knowing he’s stepping into a political snake pit.
“They have a lot of issues that are going, a lot of fighting,” he said. “There’s a lot of discord. ... They may not like some of the answers [I’ll give], but they’ll be wellthought out, legal, proper.”
There has been constant hostilities between Mayor Reed Gusciora and the governing body over the last two years, with each side firing the other’s legal counsel.
Gusciora axed council attorney Edward Kologi, then legislators retaliated by dispatching Morelli for cause in October.
The fired law director remained on the job for months while the administration fought his dismissal in court.
Morelli, who didn’t respond to phone calls, has since taken a leave of absence while the legal drama plays out. It’s unclear if he’ll ever return as law director.
That means the reigns are being handed, at least for the next two months, to Bridges, who awaits approval of the Department of Community Affairs.
Assistant city attorney Rashaan S. Williams is acting law director until DCA gives Bridges the nod, a mayoral spokesman said.
Council president Kathy McBride said at this month’s meeting that she hopes Bridges brings a sense of “healing” to the divided city government.
The son of former Ewing Mayor Alfred Bridges, the younger Bridges has ties to the Trenton area.
Bridges, a former threesport athlete at Ewing High School and standout fullback at Rutgers University in the 1990s, said he was once neighbors with current council vice president Marge Caldwell-Wilson and knows McBride well.
He hopes those inroads pay dividends whenever tensions arise, as they have under Morelli.
“I do know the personalities involved,” Bridges said.
As a sophomore at Rutgers, Bridges blew out his knee but recovered from the injury and received his undergraduate degree in political science in 1994.
Bridges, a diehard New
York Giants fan, was a free-agent acquisition of the Philadelphia Eagles in 1995 and spent a year on the practice squad, he said.
After re-aggravating his knee, Bridges said it became clear his football career was winding down. So he sought a new profession.
A previous internship with the FBI sparked Bridges’ interest in working there fulltime so he took steps to make that a reality.
He enrolled and graduated from the local police academy and worked for the Mercer County Sheriff’s Office from 1996 to 2001, working toward his juris doctorate from
Rutgers University School of Law in Camden.
The FBI had a hiring freeze after Bridges graduated law school.
Turning down a chance to work for U.S. Customs, Bridges landed a job in 2001 at the well-known law firm Fox & Rothschild in Philadelphia, where he focused
on commercial litigation for six years.
From there, he spent the next 10 years as a partner at Princeton-based Wong Fleming law firm.
The job required constant travel and long hours in New York, meaning Bridges didn’t get to spend enough time with his family.
So he decided to open his own firm in Trenton, which is expanding to add a sixth attorney.
The firm is up and running,
with others there to take up the mantle, so Bridges can focus on the issues in Trenton.
He said he had an “awful lot of respect” for Morelli, called him a “good man, a good attorney,” adding he’ll do his best to fill in as a sort of “longterm substitute teacher.”
Some issues will require patience, while others will require persistence.
“That’s when you become tenacious, and you fight until the buzzer goes
off to try to win,” Bridges said, alluding to the lessons he learned on the gridiron. “But if there’s a way to resolve it, great. If not, you just have to button up the helmets, and go to battle and see who wins.
“I guess time will tell” what happens in Trenton, he added. “The one thing I would hope is mutual respect for everyone involved. ... I am here as long as my services are helpful, are required by the mayor.”