Gov. Phil Murphy has sent fourteen candidates to the State Senate to serve as Superior Court Judges, including a Bergen County mom who was blocked from chaperoning a Girl Scout troop at Radio City Music Hall after facial recognition software identified her as a member of a North Jersey law firm that was suing the owner of the company that produces the Rockette’s Christmas show.
Kelly A. Conlon was refused entry to a December 2022 Rockette’s show because her law firm, Davis, Saperstein & Salomon, was part of a personal injury lawsuit against MSG Entertainment, which owns the venue. Murphy had initially nominated Conlon four days before Christmas, but the Senate didn’t get to her before the last legislative session ended on January 9.
Murphy has tapped David Calviello to serve as a Superior Court Judge in Bergen County, bringing the total number of attorneys connected to Matt O’Donnell, the state’s cooperating witness in an itsy-bitsy political corruption sting operation, to three.
A former Assistant Bergen County Prosecutor, Calviello is a partner at Calcagni & Kanefsky, the North Jersey law firm representing O’Donnell. He joins Peter Baker and Pearl Minato, former members of the attorney general’s controversial public corruption unit, as Murphy picks for Superior Court judgeships. Calviello has not been involved in a case involving O’Donnell, a former tax appeal attorney who pled guilty in October 2021 to two counts connected to his use of straw donors to obtain public contracts for his law firm.
Three judicial nominees who did not win Senate confirmation in the last legislative session – Assistant U.S. Attorney Kristin Vassalo, Frank Kolodzieski, and Ramsey Merhi – have were not renominated, but the New Jersey Globe has learned that the three remain active candidates for the bench. Vassalo was initially nominated on May 12, 2022, Kolodzieski on February 9, 2023, and Merhi on September 22, 2023.
Conlon and Calviello are among a package of six new Superior Court nominations from Bergen County, submitted to the Senate by Murphy last week. They join Natalie Capano, Kevin Kelly, Ian Silvera, and Lina Papaliia Corriston.
Conlan, Calviello, and Capano were nominated at the recommendation of Republican State Sen. Holly Schepisi (R-River Vale), while Kevin A. Kelly was sponsored by State Sen. Joseph Lagana (D-Paramus), and Ian Silvera came from State Sen. Gordon Johnson (D-Englewood).
Capano is a family law attorney at the Aretsky Law Group who clerked for U.S. District Court Judge Brian Martinotti when he was a Superior Court Judge and served as a research assistant to former House Judiciary Chairman Peter W. Rodino, Jr. (D-Newark). She is a school board member in Allendale.
Kelly is a former New Milford councilman and served as New Milford borough attorney, planning board attorney in Teaneck, and Bogota’s land use attorney.
Silvera is a deputy public defender. Corriston, a veteran trial lawyer, is the sister-in-law of Timothy Corriston, the managing partner of Connell Foley, one of the state’s most prominent law firms; her husband, Terrence Corriston, is a partner at Breslin & Breslin.
In addition to Baker and Minato, Murphy also resubmitted six other Superior Court nominees who weren’t confirmed in the last session: Daniel DeSalvo, Keri Ann Englentowicz, Matthew Fedor, William Marsala, Anthony Merlino, and Frank Morano.
Murphy and the Senate have significantly reduced the number of judicial vacancies in the state, which is now down to 47.