Justice Denise A. Hartman

Judge Hartman has served as an Acting Supreme Court Justice in Albany County since her April 2015 appointment to the Court of Claims. She manages full civil docket, which includes proceedings against governmental agencies, personal injury and contract actions, commercial litigation, real property disputes, divorces, and other matters.

Judge Hartman was appointed in January 2021 as the Presiding Justice of New York’s Litigation Coordination Panel. She had previously served on the Litigation Coordination Panel since April 2019 as an Associate Justice from the Third Judicial Department. She is currently coordinating discovery and motion practice in mass tort litigation arising from the Schoharie Limousine Crash of October 6, 2018. Judge Hartman has also recently been appointed as one of New York’s delegation of resource judges for matters emanating from the COVID-19 pandemic who are currently undergoing year-long training with the National Court and Science Institute.

Before taking judicial office, from 1985 to 2015, Judge Hartman served as an Assistant Solicitor General in the New York State Attorney General’s Office. There she briefed and argued appeals in the four Departments of the Appellate Division, the New York Court of Appeals, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, and the United States Supreme Court. Her appellate cases involved complex issues of constitutional and administrative law, tort liability, and civil rights law. In her later years as an Assistant Solicitor General, she was responsible for reviewing and supervising many appeals in environmental litigation in the state and federal courts.

Judge Hartman received her Juris Doctor degree, magna cum laude, from the Syracuse University College of Law in 1983. From 1983 to 1985, Judge Hartman served as a confidential law clerk at the Appellate Division, Fourth Department, and before that as a law assistant at Langan, Grossman, Kinney & Dwyer, PC in Syracuse, New York.

Before embarking on her legal career, Judge Hartman earned a Bachelor of Science degree from Cornell University College of Engineering in 1977. She worked for several years as a civil and environmental engineer for Barton & Loguidice, PC in Liverpool, New York, and for the Allegheny County Department of Planning and Development in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.