Matthew Diller Nominated to be Next New York City Bar Association President

Nominees for Leadership Positions Announced

Matthew Diller has been nominated as president of the New York City Bar Association. If elected at the City Bar’s annual meeting on May 19, 2026, he will succeed current President Muhammad U. Faridi.

The City Bar has also announced its Nominating Committee’s slate of officers and new members of its Board of Directors.

A legal educator for more than 30 years, Dean Diller has served as dean of Fordham Law School (2015-2024) and the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law (2009-2015). He is currently Dean Emeritus and Professor of Law at Fordham Law School, where he is also Senior Co-Counsel of the John D. Feerick Center for Social Justice. From 1986-1993, he was a staff attorney in the civil appeals and law reform unit of The Legal Aid Society, where he litigated a number of landmark cases.

At the City Bar, Dean Diller is currently Chair of the Independence of Lawyers and Judges Task Force. He has served as a vice president, member of the Board of Directors (formerly the Executive Committee) and co-chair of the Council on the Profession, and has been a member of numerous other committees, including Administrative Law, Civic Education, and Federal Courts. Among the many awards Dean Diller has received for his work and scholarship, the City Bar honored him with a legal services award in 1991.

Dean Diller is a member of the New York State Permanent Commission on Access to Justice and is chair of the commission’s Committee on Law School Involvement. He has served as a member of the New York State Judicial Institute on Professionalism in the Law, and on the boards of The Legal Aid Society (Executive Committee), Legal Services NYC (vice chair), the National Center for Law and Economic Justice, and Volunteers of Legal Service (VOLS).

Dean Diller has lectured and written extensively on the legal dimensions of social welfare policy, including public assistance, Social Security, and disability programs, and he has lectured around the world on issues relating to the U.S. constitutional system.

After receiving an A.B. and a J.D., both magna cum laude, from Harvard University, where he was an editor of the Harvard Law Review, Dean Diller clerked for the Honorable Walter R. Mansfield of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.

Dean Diller is the first law school dean or professor to be nominated as City Bar president since John D. Feerick when he was dean of Fordham Law in the early 90s.

“I am honored to have been nominated for the position of president of the New York City Bar Association at a critical moment,” said Dean Diller. “The mission of the Association has never been more important than it is today. I look forward to working with all of our committees, officers, the Association’s superb staff, and others in the legal community to make our legal system more fair, to uphold the principles and institutions of our great democracy, and to bring us closer to the ideal of justice.”

Nominated to serve one-year terms as the City Bar’s three Vice Presidents were Patrick T. Campbell, Baker & Hostetler LLP; Paula T. Edgar, PGE Consulting Group LLC; and Hon. Andrea Masley, New York State Supreme Court.

Ana Alfonso, O’Melveny & Myers LLP, was nominated to continue serving as Association Treasurer, and Michael A. Fernández, Cozen O’Connor, was nominated to serve as Association Secretary.

Nominees for the Board of Directors are Danielle C. Lesser, Morrison Cohen LLP; Glenn Metsch-Ampel, Lawyers For Children; Michael P. Regan, Meister Seelig & Fein; Tracey Salmon-Smith, Faegre Drinker Biddle & Reath LLP; Jessenia Vazcones-Yagual, Sompo International; Kaylin Whittingham, Whittingham Law; and Christopher Wilds, Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler LLP.

The Candidates were nominated by the City Bar’s Nominating Committee: Sheila S. Boston (chair), Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer LLP; Hon. Ariel E. Belen, JAMS; Sidney Cherubin, NYC Department of Consumer and Worker Protection; Devika Kewalramani, FisherBroyles, LLP; Hon. Verna L. Saunders, New York State Supreme Court; Hon. Elizabeth S. Stong, U.S. Bankruptcy Court, EDNY; and Fara S. Sunderji, Dorsey & Whitney LLP.

About the Association
The mission of the New York City Bar Association, which was founded in 1870 and has over 20,000 members, is to equip and mobilize a diverse legal profession to practice with excellence, promote reform of the law, and uphold the rule of law and access to justice in support of a fair society and the public interest in our community, our nation, and throughout the world. www.nycbar.org.