Ronald L. Ellis

Ronald L. Ellis (born July 4, 1950) is a United States magistrate judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York.

Early life and education

Ellis was born in Lafourche Parish, Louisiana. He received his Bachelor of Arts in chemical engineering from Manhattan College in 1972 and his J.D. from New York University School of Law in 1975.

Legal career

Ellis was passed the patent bar and was briefly a patent attorney.

He worked for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund as a staffer specializing in fair employment class action litigation (1976-1984), as director of the Fund's Fair Employment Program (1984-1990), and as director of its Poverty & Justice Program (1990-1993). He also served as an adjunct professor at the New York University School of Law, teaching employment law for two years at the graduate position and racism and American law for ten years at the undergraduate position. He taught as an adjunct professor at New York Law School for three years, as an instructor in a course in blacks and law.

While employed at the NAACP Fund, Ellis worked as a trial lawyer in six federal circuits in 12 states, dealing with voting rights, health care, housing, education, and environmental justice cases in addition to equal employment cases. He took part in eight appeals to the appellate courts in three of the circuits. He was the advocate for the respondents in oral argument before the U.S. Supreme Court in University of Tennessee v. Elliott (1986). 1

Ellis has written on issues including trial procedures, witness examination, and statistical proof and has co-authored the chapter on "Achieving Race and Gender Fairness in the Courtroom" in The Judge's Book (2nd ed. 1994).

Judicial career

Ellis was sworn in on November 16, 1993 as a magistrate judge for the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York.

He gained national attention when he and Magistrate Judges Gabriel Gorenstein and Theodore Katz were assigned to the Bernard Madoff case. Madoff is facing federal securities fraud charges. On January 12, 2009, Ellis refused a request from federal prosecutors to revoke bail for Madoff, allowing him to remain confined to quarters and under guard in his Madoff's $7 million penthouse apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan after Madoff was caught mailing an alleged valuable jewelry to relatives and friends.

Ellis is a member of the American Bar Association, the New York State Bar Association, the Federal Magistrate Judges Association, the Metropolitan Black Bar Association, and the Federal Bar Council.

External Links

• [http://www1.nysd.uscourts.gov/judge_info.php?id=62| Office of Magistrate Judge Ronald L. Ellis]
• A Profile of Ronald L. Ellis
• The United States District Court for the Southern District of New York: A Retrospective (1990-2000) The New York County Lawyers’ Association Committee On The Federal Courts December 2002
• Ronald L. Ellis Lecturer-in-Law at Columbia Law
• Federal Bar Council Second Circuit Redbook, 2003-2004, Vincent C. Allexander and Anne D. Alexander (eds.).