DeFazio gets second term as prosecutor

Saturday, July 28, 2007
By MICHAELANGELO CONTE
JOURNAL STAFF WRITER

Hudson County Prosecutor Edward DeFazio became the first county prosecutor sworn in to a second five-year term in more than 60 years when he took his oath yesterday at a ceremony attended by Attorney General Anne Milgram.

"There is a special gene in the DeFazio gene pool and it is a gene for public service," said state Superior Court Judge and former Hudson County Prosecutor Carmen Messano during the ceremony in the county Administration Building Annex.

Messano noted that DeFazio's father, M. Edward DeFazio, was a executive director of the Hoboken Housing Authority for more than 20 years, beginning around 1950; his uncle, Charles DeFazio, was a Hoboken Municipal Court judge and assistant county counsel.

The prosecutor thanked his wife Patricia; state Sen. Bernard Kenny, D-Hoboken, who is currently in the hospital after an accident last week; Gov. Jon Corzine and others. He joked that Corzine, who nominated him for a second term, was "the best judge of legal talent in the state."

DeFazio is a Jersey City native who grew up in Hoboken and Weehawken. He now lives in Jersey City's Paulus Hook section. He has a degree in history from Fordham University and a law degree from Seton Hall University.

From 1978 to 1989 DeFazio served as an assistant prosecutor before becoming Jersey City's chief municipal court judge. He then returned to the Prosecutor's Office in 1991, where he held the positions of first assistant prosecutor and then deputy first assistant prosecutor until April 2001, when he became a Superior Court judge.

He was appointed to the county's top law enforcement job in 2002.