Jeremy Feigenbaum, New Jersey’s first solicitor general and one of the most consequential lawyers ever to serve in state government, will leave office on September 10 after six years overseeing the state’s most significant constitutional and appellate litigation.
Feigenbaum, 37, built the Office of the Solicitor General from a one-lawyer operation into a nationally prominent team of 15 attorneys. He argued roughly 30 cases during his tenure, including three before the United States Supreme Court, and became a central figure in New Jersey’s legal battles over birthright citizenship, the Gateway Hudson Tunnel, the Waterfront Commission of New York Harbor, abortion rights, gun laws, public health restrictions and executive power.
He is expected to enter private practice, but has not yet announced his plans.
Feigenbaum served under two governors, Democrats Phil Murphy and Mikie Sherrill; four attorneys general, Gurbir Grewal, Andrew Bruck, Matt Platkin and Jennifer Davenport; and three presidential administrations.
Sherrill and Davenport have not yet announced Feigenbaum’s successor, but Executive Assistant Attorney General Sundeep Iyer, a former law clerk to two U.S. Supreme Court justices, is considered the leading contender.
His departure will end a meteoric chapter in New Jersey legal history for a lawyer widely regarded as one of the most brilliant appellate minds of his generation.
“My administration created the New Jersey Solicitor General’s Office in large part because we were able to entrust it to Jeremy Feigenbaum, one of America’s best appellate lawyers,” Murphy said. “Over the last six years, Jeremy’s advocacy was integral to many of our achievements, from dissolving the Waterfront Commission to successfully defending our state’s public health policies during a once-in-a-century pandemic.”
Murphy said Feigenbaum emerged during President Donald Trump’s second term as a national leader in legal efforts to protect constitutional rights.
“More recently, during the second Trump administration, Jeremy has led the national fight to preserve our civil rights and liberties, most notably by defending birthright citizenship before the U.S. Supreme Court,” Murphy said. “His intellect, skill, and tireless work ethic have already established a remarkable legacy, and I know there is much more yet to come.”
For Feigenbaum, the path to the Supreme Court began in Teaneck.
He grew up in Bergen County and became involved in New Jersey politics early, interning for Rep. Steve Rothman (D-Fair Lawn) as a high school student, and Senate Majority Leader Loretta Weinberg (D-Teaneck) and Bergen County Commissioner Tracy Silna Zur while attending Brown University. He served as president of the Brown College Democrats and as national vice president of the College Democrats.
Even as a 23-year-old law student, Feigenbaum displayed a characteristic command of rules and institutions. In 2012, he secured a place as a delegate to the Democratic National Convention for President Barack Obama in part because he had studied the party’s delegate-selection process closely enough to understand opportunities others had overlooked. He used that knowledge to convince then-Bergen County Democratic Chairman Louis Stellato to back him for the post.
That attention to legal architecture — not simply the argument that should prevail, but the mechanism by which it could prevail — would become a hallmark of his career.
After graduating from Harvard Law School, Feigenbaum clerked for Judge William A. Fletcher of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and then for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan.
He later joined Kirkland & Ellis, one of the nation’s top law firms.
New Jersey had never had a solicitor general when Murphy’s administration created the office in 2020. Feigenbaum was not merely its first occupant; he largely defined what the job would become.
The solicitor general coordinates New Jersey’s participation in cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, federal circuit courts and the New Jersey Supreme Court, while advising the attorney general on constitutional questions and other high-stakes litigation. Feigenbaum also directed the state’s participation in multistate lawsuits and friend-of-the-court briefs, placing New Jersey at the center of major national legal disputes.
““Jeremy Feigenbaum is a true public servant whose tireless work has left an extraordinary mark not only on New Jersey, but also our country. ” Sherrill said. “He helped create the Office of the Solicitor General in 2020 and built it from a one-lawyer operation into a formidable 15-attorney team.”
Sherrill credited Feigenbaum with becoming “a powerful advocate for our state,” particularly in defending the Gateway Program and challenging actions by the Trump administration.
“Through 30 oral arguments, including three before the United States Supreme Court, Jeremy has been a powerful advocate for our state, defending critical priorities like the Gateway Program and standing up to the Trump Administration’s many abuses of power,” Sherrill said. “We are deeply grateful for his exceptional service and unwavering commitment to the Constitution and to the people of New Jersey, and we wish him success in his next chapter.”
Feigenbaum’s appellate work also reshaped law-enforcement transparency in New Jersey. In a case he argued in 2023, the New Jersey Supreme Court upheld a 2020 attorney general directive requiring the disclosure of officers who receive major discipline — termination, demotion or a suspension of more than five days — along with summaries of their misconduct and punishment. The court rejected nearly all constitutional, statutory, contractual and public-policy challenges, finding the directive reasonable and consistent with legislative policy.
Attorney General Jennifer Davenport said that “anyone who has spent even 30 seconds in Jeremy’s company knows just how wonderful he is. ”
“Jeremy has established New Jersey as a nationwide leader in litigating some of the most important issues of our time: from protecting billions of dollars in unlawfully withheld federal funds like the Gateway Tunnel Project, to defending New Jersey’s commonsense firearm-safety laws, to taking on the Waterfront Commission, to standing up for birthright citizenship,” she said. “As New Jersey’s first Solicitor General, he has built our Office of the Solicitor General into a team that is widely recognized as one of the very best in the nation.”
Return to the Supreme Court
Feigenbaum’s first argument before the U.S. Supreme Court came in 2021 in PennEast Pipeline Co. v. New Jersey, a major federalism case involving whether a private pipeline company holding a certificate from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission could use federal eminent domain authority to condemn state-owned property.
Feigenbaum argued that New Jersey’s sovereign immunity protected state land from condemnation proceedings brought by a private company. The Supreme Court rejected the state’s position, but the case immediately established Feigenbaum as New Jersey’s voice before the nation’s highest court.
Two years later, he returned to the Supreme Court in New York v. New Jersey, an original-jurisdiction dispute over New Jersey’s attempt to withdraw from the Waterfront Commission of New York Harbor.
Created through a bistate compact in 1953 to combat organized crime and corruption at the ports, the commission had become the subject of growing criticism from New Jersey officials, port employers and labor leaders who viewed it as outdated and unaccountable. New York maintained that New Jersey could not withdraw unilaterally.
Feigenbaum argued that it could.
The justices unanimously agreed, handing New Jersey a complete victory and clearing the way for the state to leave the commission and transfer law-enforcement responsibility to the New Jersey State Police. It was a case with enormous political, economic and institutional significance — and one that New Jersey had spent years fighting.
But Feigenbaum’s highest-profile appearance came in 2025, when he represented a coalition of Democratic attorneys general challenging Trump’s executive order seeking to end birthright citizenship for children born in the United States to undocumented immigrants and certain other noncitizens without permanent legal status.
Platkin led an 18-state lawsuit filed in Massachusetts, and federal judges in several related cases blocked the order as unconstitutional. When the litigation reached the Supreme Court in Trump v. CASA, the justices considered not only the president’s order but also the power of federal judges to issue nationwide injunctions.
Feigenbaum’s argument placed the 36-year-old lawyer at the center of one of the most important constitutional confrontations of Trump’s second presidency. The resulting decision became a major ruling on the scope of nationwide injunctions, with consequences far beyond the immediate dispute over citizenship.
No matter the ultimate procedural limitations imposed by the court, Feigenbaum’s appearance cemented his national reputation. No longer simply a gifted state appellate lawyer, Feigenbaum became one of the country’s most visible legal advocates against the Trump administration.
His final year in government brought another massive fight, this time over the Gateway Hudson Tunnel Project.
In February 2026, New York and New Jersey sued after the Trump administration froze federal funding for the $16 billion project, which is intended to construct a new rail tunnel beneath the Hudson River and rehabilitate the deteriorating existing tubes connecting New Jersey with New York Penn Station.
The project, expected to support roughly 90,000 jobs, was approaching a potentially catastrophic funding deadline. Without federal payments, officials warned, work could stop, and the states could become responsible for maintaining dormant construction sites at enormous cost.
Feigenbaum argued the case for New Jersey, rejecting the federal government’s assertion that the dispute belonged in the Court of Federal Claims. He told U.S. District Judge Jeannette Vargas that New York and New Jersey faced “genuinely independent and distinct harms” because the states would be forced to spend their own money to preserve the construction sites if federal funding disappeared.
The federal government maintained that there was “no freestanding statutory obligation requiring continued funding.”
Vargas issued a temporary injunction restoring the money while the litigation continued, finding that the states were likely to succeed on the merits of their claim that the freeze was arbitrary and capricious. She also concluded that delaying the project would damage the public interest.
The case arrived during a transition in Trenton. Davenport, Sherrill’s choice to lead the Attorney General’s Office, retained Feigenbaum as solicitor general, and the Gateway lawsuit was filed one day after her appointment was announced; it immediately became one of the new administration’s most important legal actions.
The redistricting lawsuit
Not every assignment Feigenbaum handled carried national consequences. Some were intensely political and uniquely New Jersey.
In early 2022, he represented the state in former Senate President Steve Sweeney’s attempt to regain his seat on the New Jersey Apportionment Commission.
After Sweeney unexpectedly lost his State Senate seat to Republican Edward Durr (R-Logan), Democratic State Chairman LeRoy Jones, Jr. removed him from the commission and replaced him with Laura Matos. Sweeney sued, arguing that his removal after the appointment and certification deadlines was unlawful.
Feigenbaum defended Secretary of State Tahesha Way’s certification of Matos. He argued that an appointing authority possesses broad power to remove an appointee unless the state constitution or a statute specifically says otherwise; he also cited a 2010 Office of Legislative Services opinion supporting the authority of an incoming Senate president to remove an apportionment commissioner selected by his predecessor.
Superior Court Judge Robert Lougy sided with the state and refused to reinstate Sweeney.
It was politically a must-win case for the Murphy administration, although far removed from the profound constitutional disputes that normally commanded Feigenbaum’s attention. The state sent its solicitor general into a trial-level political fight — putting an elite Supreme Court advocate into a case well below his usual weight class — because losing could have changed the balance of the commission responsible for drawing all 40 legislative districts.
Feigenbaum’s rapid rise nearly carried him to the federal bench.
In 2023, he was considered for an open New Jersey seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit following the retirement of Judge Joseph Greenaway Jr. The Biden White House ultimately viewed Feigenbaum as too young and instead nominated Adeel Mangi.
Mangi never received a confirmation vote in the Senate. When Joe Biden’s term expired, the vacancy remained open and eventually went to a nominee selected by Trump — an outcome that left New Jersey Democrats wondering whether passing over Feigenbaum and other contenders had been a historic miscalculation by Biden.
Last year, in an act of extraordinary generosity and character, Feigenbaum yielded a chance to argue a fourth case before the U.S. Supreme Court on whether faith-based pregnancy centers could challenge a New Jersey subpoena in federal court. Iyer argued the case instead, and lost.
At 37, Feigenbaum leaves state government with decades of potential work ahead of him and a resume that already includes three Supreme Court arguments, a unanimous victory in a landmark interstate dispute and leadership of some of the country’s most closely watched constitutional litigation.
He also leaves behind an institution that did not exist before he arrived.