Letitia James
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Letitia Ann "Tish" James (born October 18, 1958) is an American lawyer and politician from the state of New York. She has served since 2019 as the 67th attorney general of New York (NYAG), having been first elected to the post in 2018. A member of the Democratic Party, James is the first Black person to serve as New York attorney general and is the first Black woman to hold statewide office in New York. Born and raised in Brooklyn, James graduated from Lehman College in the Bronx before obtaining her Juris Doctor degree at Howard University in Washington, D . She worked as a public defender, then on staff in the New York State Assembly, and later as a New York State Assistant Attorney General in the Brooklyn regional office. James served as a member of the New York City Council from 2004 to 2013. She represented the 35th district, which includes the Brooklyn neighborhoods of Clinton Hill, Fort Greene, parts of Crown Heights, Prospect Heights, and Bedford–Stuyvesant. James chaired the committees on economic development and sanitation and served on several others. From 2013 to 2018, she was the New York City Public Advocate, making her the first African American woman to be elected to and hold citywide office in New York City. James' office filed a civil suit against Donald Trump that resulted in penalties and a fine of more than four hundred million dollars. A divided appeals court upheld Trump's liability but voided the penalty as excessive. Both sides appealed to the New York Court of Appeals. James was briefly a candidate in the 2022 New York gubernatorial election, but suspended her campaign in December 2021, opting to instead run for reelection as Attorney General. In October 2025, James was federally indicted on one count of bank fraud and one count of making false statements to a financial institution. James pled not guilty to the charges. The case was dismissed by a federal judge on November 24, 2025, after which two other grand juries refused to bring charges against her again. Her lawyers described the government's actions as revenge on behalf of the Trump administration.