Gov. Phil Murphy’s nominee for associate justice of the New Jersey Supreme Court, John Jay Hoffman, has passed a critical point in his bid for Senate confirmation with signoff from State Sen. Latham Tiver (R-Southampton), the New Jersey Globe has confirmed.
The Senate is expected to consider Hoffman’s nomination in early September.
The New Jersey Globe projects that Hoffman has the support of a majority of Senate Judiciary Committee members and at least 21 votes in the full Senate. That could put Hoffman on the top court just after the 2024-25 session begins.
Murphy nominated Hoffman, a former acting attorney general of New Jersey and the general counsel of Rutgers University for the last eight years, on June 10. If confirmed, he’ll replace Justice Lee A. Solomon, who reaches the mandatory retirement age of 70 on Saturday after spending ten years on the state’s top court.
Tiver, a freshman Republican from Burlington County, had to approve Hoffman under the Senate’s unwritten rule of senatorial courtesy, which prevents consideration of a governor’s nominee until home county senators signed off.
Senate President Nicholas Scutari played a crucial role in working with Tiver and the governor’s office to pave the way for Hoffman’s now-likely confirmation to the Supreme Court.
At the same time, the Senate is also expected to consider Murphy’s nomination of a close Tiver ally, Michael S. Mikulski III, the Republican mayor of Southampton, to serve as a Superior Court judge.
Murphy is also expected to nominate former State Sen. Jean Stanfield (R-Westhampton) to a seat on the New Jersey Parole Board and businessman Robert Healey to a seat on the South Jersey Transportation Authority; Healey was the Republican nominee for Congress in 2022 against Democrat Andy Kim (D-Moorestown). Additionally, former Bass River Mayor Deborah Buzby-Cope is likely to be appointed to the Pinelands Commission.
Hoffman, 59, was serving as executive assistant attorney general in June 2013 when Gov. Chris Christie appointed Attorney General Jeff Chiesa to the U.S. Senate following the death of Frank R. Lautenberg.
In turn, Christie named Hoffman acting attorney general in what was supposed to be a short-term job. Later that year, Christie announced his intention to nominate his chief of staff, Kevin O’Dowd, as attorney general. But the Bridgegate scandal put O’Dowd on hold—Christie never formally nominated him—and left state government one year later.
As a result, Hoffman remained as acting attorney general for nearly three years until departing in March 2016 to become vice president and general counsel at Rutgers.
Chiesa and other Republicans, including State Sen. Jon Bramnick (R-Westfield), had advocated for Hoffman’s nomination.
Hoffman served as Assistant U.S. Attorney in New Jersey, prosecuting economic and white-collar crimes and spent about two years as the director of investigations at the New Jersey State Comptroller’s Office before Chiesa named him to his leadership team in 2012.
An unaffiliated voter, Hoffman will be taking a Republican seat. That follows a precedent GOP Gov. Christine Todd Whitman set in 1999 when she nominated Jaynee LaVecchia, who never joined a political party, to replace a retiring Justice Marie Garibaldi, a Republican. LaVecchia had served as deputy chief counsel to Gov. Tom Kean and in Whitman’s cabinet and was deemed Republican enough to qualify for the seat.
The 55-year-old Mikulski recently retired as a decorated U.S. Army Reserve Colonel. During his thirty years there, he completed combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. After serving on the school board, Mikulski was elected to the township committee in 2014. He’s practiced law for 31 years.
Murphy’s nomination last year of former state Division of Criminal Justice Director Pearl Minato to a Superior Court judgeship has received signoff from Tiver but is not scheduled to be on the Senate’s September calendar. Minato is a former chief of staff to the embattled Office of Public Integrity and Accountability, and her nomination has stalled amid concerns about how the OPIA has conducted itself.
Hoffman will likely face questions from the Senate Judiciary Committee over the OPIA’s allegation that he was partly responsible for “an era of inaction” in which the prosecution of public corruption was not a priority.