KIM GUADAGNO

KIM McFadden Guadagno is a partner at Connell Foley, and is based in the firm’s Jersey City, New Jersey office. She concentrates her practice on assisting public and private clients with complex civil and regulatory litigation, white collar defense, public policy, crisis management and internal investigations.

In eight years as New Jersey’s first lieutenant governor and the 33rd secretary of state, from 2010-2018, Guadagno was a steadfast advocate for businesses and corporations statewide, creating an effective infrastructure for economic growth and job creation.

After two federal clerkships and five years of private practice, Guadagno began her public service career as a federal prosecutor with the Organized Crime and Racketeering Strike

Force in Brooklyn. She later became an assistant U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New

York and the District of New Jersey, where she was twice awarded the U.S. Department of

Justice’s highest honor for her prosecutions.

Following her years of federal service, she became a senior member of the State of New

Jersey Attorney General’s Office where she oversaw statewide criminal investigations. In 2001, Guadagno left the public sector to work in private practice and also taught at Rutgers School of Law in Newark for six years.

In 2005, she was elected a commissioner in her hometown of Monmouth Beach and two years later, Guadagno became the first woman sheriff in Monmouth County where she led the 650-member, $65 million law enforcement agency until inaugurated New Jersey’s first lieutenant governor.

NJBIZ named Guadagno to its Power 100 List from 2011-2017, and its 2019 Best 50 Women in Business and Law Power 50 lists.

Guadagno earned a BA, cum laude, from Ursinus College, and a JD, cum laude, from American University, Washington College of Law.

Guadagno and her husband have three sons. She traces her Irish heritage to Co. Roscommon through her Purcell, O’Fallon and McFadden relatives, all of who moved to America in the 1890s. “I kissed the Blarney Stone in person in 1990 but haven’t been able to get back since…I am lucky enough to be born Irish and silly enough to marry an Italian,” she says.

For many years Guadagno has been named as one of New Jersey’s Irish American Leaders by Insider NJ.