The Hon. Noel L. Hillman

Noel L. Hillman was appointed June 12, 2006 as a United States District Judge for the District of New Jersey.  He was unanimously confirmed by the United States Senate after receiving the ABA’s Standing Committee on the Federal Judiciary’s highest ranking (“Unanimously Well-Qualified”).  Judge Hillman is Chair of the Third Circuit Model Civil Jury Instructions Committee, a member of the Third Circuit Committee on Re-Entry Courts, Chair of the District of New Jersey’s Criminal Law Committee and a member of the Jury Trial Subgroup of the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts' COVID-19 National Task Force. 

Before the bench, he spent fourteen years with the U.S. Department of Justice as Senior Counsel to the Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division (2006); Chief and Principal Deputy Chief of the Division’s Public Integrity Section (2001-06); Assistant U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey (1992-2001; Deputy Chief, Criminal Division (2000-01)); Acting Attorney-in-Charge of the Camden office (2000); Customs Crimes Coordinator (1992-2000), and Trial Attorney, Campaign Finance Task Force (1999-2000).  As a prosecutor, Judge Hillman received the Director’s Award from the Executive Office of U.S. Attorneys for superior performance as an Assistant U.S. Attorney, the Department’s highest award for line prosecutors (twice); the Attorney General’s Award for Fraud Prevention; and the Assistant Attorney General’s Award for Outstanding Leadership in Law Enforcement.  He served as a member of the Senior Executive Service, the Advisory Board of the Election Assistance Commission, the FBI’s Criminal Undercover Operations Review Committee, and served as Counsel to the Integrity Committee of the President’s Council on Integrity and Efficiency.  He is a regular instructor in trial advocacy at the National Advocacy Center, the Justice Department’s permanent training center in Columbia, South Carolina.

Judge Hillman was a State Department delegate to Global Forums III (Seoul, Korea) and  IV (Brasilia, Brazil), the leading international anti-corruption conference; a member of the U.S. negotiation team for the United Nations Convention Against Corruption (UNCAC) in Merida, Mexico and Vienna, Austria; and a member of a UNCAC implementation team in Turin, Italy.  He has participated in Justice Department training missions to Belgrade, Serbia (corporate criminal liability) and Kiev and Kharkov, Ukraine (non-bank money laundering), and lectured at the Central and Eastern European Law Institute (CEELI) in Prague, Czech Republic (judicial integrity).  As a Department of State designated anti-corruption expert he assisted the Council of Europe in evaluations of member state compliance with the Group of States Against Corruption (GRECO) treaty.  He participated in GRECO’s Third and Fourth Round evaluations of the United States and assisted GRECO in its Fourth Round evaluations of Ireland and Turkey.  He recently provided technical assistance to the Costa Rican Judicial Transparency Commission and serves on the Advisory Committee of the Higher Education Center for Ethics, Equity and Transparency for Paraguay, a partnership between Rutgers University and the Universidad Nacional de Asunción.

Judge Hillman was a litigation associate with Lord Day & Lord, Barrett Smith in New York, New York practicing securities law and white collar criminal defense (1988-1992) after clerking for the Hon. Maryanne Trump Barry, then a U.S. District Court Judge for the District of New Jersey (1986-88).  He graduated with honors from Monmouth University (B.A., English) and Seton Hall University School of Law, where he served as Articles Editor of the Law Review.  He holds an LL.M. in Trade Regulation (intellectual property and anti-trust) from New York University School of Law and an LL.M in Judicial Studies from Duke University School of Law.  Judge Hillman is a member of the bars of New York and New Jersey; a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation; and has taught on the faculties of the University of Pennsylvania and Rutgers Law Schools.