Family Court judge: Joseph A. Egitio to serve another term
POUGHKEEPSIE, N.Y. >> A longtime Republican Dutchess Family Court Judge won another term in Tuesday’s election after defeating a former union president representing lawyers at the New York City Legal Aid Society, according to unofficial results with the Dutchess County Board of Elections.
Family Court Judge Joseph A. Egitio defeated James Rogers, a Democrat, by a vote of 33,777 to 32,922.
Egitio, who ran on the Republican and Conservative lines, was first elected in 2013.
In 2018, Egitio was appointed by the district administrative judge to be the supervising Judge of the Family Courts in the 9th Judicial District encompassing Westchester, Rockland, Orange, Putnam and Dutchess Counties.
Egitio is also the Chairman of the Advisory Committee for the Attorneys for Children Panel for the Appellate Division, Second Department. The panel is responsible for overseeing the training and competence of attorneys who represent children.
In addition, in 2017 Egitio was appointed the chairman of the Dutchess County Raise the Age Committee and charged with presenting a plan of implementation for the county when state lawmakers raised the age of adolescent criminal responsibility from 16 to 18 years of age.
Egitio is a member of the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges, the New York State Family Court Working Group, the New York State Regional Youth Justice Team, the Dutchess County Juvenile Justice Committee, the Dutchess County Child Welfare Court Improvement Project, the New York State Family Court Judges Association, the New York State Magistrates Association, the Dutchess County Magistrates Association, and the New York State, Dutchess County and Mid-Hudson Women’s Bar Associations.
Prior to his election to county-wide office, Egitto was a practicing attorney for 28 years representing litigants and children in all types of cases in family court, his site’s biography said.
Egitio has been an Acting Supreme Court Justice since 2016 and is cross-assigned as a County Court Judge and Surrogate’s Court Judge.
Rogers ran under the Democratic and Working Families banners.
According to his campaign website, when Rogers was president of the union representing the 800 lawyers at the Legal Aid Society, he learned the attorneys assigned to advocate for children in Family Court (known as Law Guardians) faced crushing caseloads.
As the very first Deputy Attorney General for Social Justice in New York, Rogers was part of the team that brought together the “best and the brightest from those units charged with protecting New Yorkers most in need of a champion,” his campaign website said.