Samuel Hazard Gillespie Jr. (July 12, 1910 – March 7, 2011) was an American lawyer and politician from New York.

Biography

Gillespie was born in Morristown, New Jersey, and attended

Yale College Yale College is the undergraduate college of Yale University. Founded in 1701, it is the original school of the university. Although other Yale schools were founded as early as 1810, all of Yale was officially known as Yale College until 1887, ...

(1932) and

Yale Law School Yale Law School (Yale Law or YLS) is the law school of Yale University, a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. It was established in 1824 and has been ranked as the best law school in the United States by '' U.S. News & Worl ...

(1935). He gained experience as the principal assistant for 15 years to former U.S. Solicitor General

John W. Davis John William Davis (April 13, 1873 – March 24, 1955) was an American politician, diplomat and lawyer. He served under President Woodrow Wilson as the Solicitor General of the United States and the United States Ambassador to the United Kingdom ...

, and argued four cases in the

United States Supreme Court The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that involve a point o ...

. Gillespie was President of the

New York State Bar Association The New York State Bar Association (NYSBA) is a voluntary bar association for the state of New York. The mission of the association is to cultivate the science of jurisprudence; promote reform in the law; facilitate the administration of justic ...

from 1958 to 1959, and

U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York The United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York is the chief federal law enforcement officer in eight New York counties: New York (Manhattan), Bronx, Westchester, Putnam, Rockland, Orange, Dutchess and Sullivan. Establish ...

from 1959 to 1961. While US Attorney he prosecuted the US government's obscenity case against the novel '' Lady Chatterley's Lover''. Gillespie was senior counsel at

Davis Polk & Wardwell Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP, better known as Davis Polk is a white-shoe, international law firm headquartered in New York City with 980 attorneys worldwide and offices in Washington, D.C., Northern California, London, Paris, Madrid, Hong Kong, Be ...

in New York City and had been a member of the firm since 1948. At one point in his career he represented a number of actors and actresses including

Mary Pickford Gladys Marie Smith (April 8, 1892 – May 29, 1979), known professionally as Mary Pickford, was a Canadian-American stage and screen actress and producer with a career that spanned five decades. A pioneer in the US film industry, she co-founde ...

and Maurice Chevalier. At Davis Polk he worked on the landmark

US Supreme Court The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that involve a point of ...

case ''

Erie Railroad Co. v. Tompkins ''Erie Railroad Co. v. Tompkins'', 304 U.S. 64 (1938), was a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision in which the Court held that there is no general American federal common law and that U.S. federal courts must apply state law, not federal law, t ...

''. He retired in 1980. Gillespie was a member of the

Association of the Bar of the City of New York The New York City Bar Association (City Bar), founded in 1870, is a voluntary association of lawyers and law students. Since 1896, the organization, formally known as the Association of the Bar of the City of New York, has been headquartered in a ...

, Federal and American Bar Associations, the New York County Lawyers Association, the American Judicature Society, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the

Skull and Bones Skull and Bones, also known as The Order, Order 322 or The Brotherhood of Death, is an undergraduate senior secret student society at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. The oldest senior class society at the university, Skull and Bone ...

society at Yale.

Recent years

He was Chairman of the American Skin Association and a member of the Piermont Public Library Board of directors. Gillespie was President of the Tappan Zee Preservation Coalition, Inc. Gillespie and his wife, Frances, were married from 1977 to 1995, and their boat called "the Venture" was taken for a sail up and down the Hudson River, when it was not sailing down the Intracoastal.

Death

Gillespie died of pancreatic cancer on March 7, 2011, at his home in

Nyack, New York Nyack () is a village located primarily in the town of Orangetown in Rockland County, New York, United States. Incorporated in 1872, it retains a very small western section in Clarkstown. It is a suburb of New York City lying approximately no ...

. He was 100 years old.''S. Hazard Gillespie, Former U.S. Attorney, Dies at 100''
''New York Times'', March 8, 2011.

References

Links

The Most Senior Senior Counsel? A Chat With Hazard Gillespie
blogs.wsj.com, July 14, 2008. {{DEFAULTSORT:Gillespie, Samuel Hazard 1910 births 2011 deaths People from Morristown, New Jersey American centenarians Men centenarians United States Attorneys for the Southern District of New York Deaths from cancer in New York (state) Deaths from pancreatic cancer Davis Polk & Wardwell lawyers Yale College alumni New Jersey lawyers New Jersey politicians 20th-century American lawyers