Conaway taps Keith Roachford, alum of four U.S. senators, as chief of staff

Keith Roachford, who spent 35 years in Washington working his way through the ranks of four different U.S. senators from New Jersey, will be new Rep. Herb Conaway (D-Delran)’s chief of staff, Conaway’s office announced today.

Roachford began his career in Congress in 1987, working as an assistant office manager and mail director in Senator Bill Bradley’s office. Upon Bradley’s retirement from the Senate in 1997, Roachford became Senator Bob Torricelli’s deputy chief of staff; once Torricelli left office in 2003, he switched over to serve as special projects director for Senator Jon Corzine; and after Corzine was elected governor in 2005, he took on the role of deputy legislative director for Corzine’s successor, Senator Bob Menendez.

Roachford, a native of Willingboro in Conaway’s 3rd congressional district, left Menendez’s office in 2022 and spent much of this year working at Kean University before deciding to make his return to Washington.

Conaway’s staff will also include another seasoned New Jersey staffer: Seth Levin, who will be Conaway’s district director. Levin, until recently the legislative liaison for the New Jersey Secretary of Higher Education, worked as chief of staff to Assemblymembers Roy Freiman (D-Hillsborough) and Annette Quijano (D-Elizabeth) and as campaign manager for now-State Sen. Andrew Zwicker (D-South Brunswick) in his upset 2015 Assembly win.

Other members of Conaway’s senior staff hail from congressional offices outside of New Jersey: Laney O’Shea, Conaway’s legislative director and deputy chief of staff, worked for Rep. Jeff Jackson, who is now the North Carolina Attorney General; Christopher Garcia, his communications director, was the press secretary for longtime New York Rep. Nydia Velázquez; and Saroya Kirton, his director of operations, worked for Illinois Rep. Jonathan Jackson.