From 1998 to 2008, Abrams worked as a federal prosecutor in the Southern District of New York, where she served as Chief of the General Crimes Unit from 2005 to 2007 and Deputy Chief of the Criminal Division from 2007 to 2008. She received the United States Department of Justice Director's Award for Superior Performance for two cases. The first case involved the convictions of members of a Colombian gang wanted for the murder of a New York City police detective and some 100 armed robberies; the second case was for the convictions of leaders of the Bloods gang. In 2008, Abrams returned to Davis Polk as Special Counsel for Pro Bono. She had previously worked at the firm as a litigation associate from 1994 to 1998. While at Davis Polk, Ms. Abrams served as Counsel to the New York State Justice Task Force, a task force created by New York State Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman to examine the causes of wrongful convictions and make recommendations for changes to safeguard against such convictions in the future. Abrams is also an adjunct professor at Columbia Law School, where she teaches about investigating and prosecuting federal criminal cases.
Federal judicial service
recommended Abrams to fill a judicial vacancy on the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. On July 28, 2011, President Barack Obama formally nominated Abrams to the Southern District of New York. She replaced Judge Lewis A. Kaplan who took senior status in 2011. The Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on her nomination on October 4, 2011, and reported her nomination to the floor on November 3, 2011. On March 22, 2012, the Senate confirmed Abrams in a 96–2 vote. She received her commission on March 23, 2012. In 2015, Judge Abrams, together with another judge, created and began to run the "Young Adult Opportunity Program," a judicially supervised pretrial program for non-violent young adults charged in the Southern District of New York. The Program provides young adult defendants with access to employment, counseling, and treatment resources. Program participants, if they are successful, may receive a shorter sentence, or even a reduction, deferral or dismissal of the charges against them.
Notable cases
In October 2013, Carmen Segarra filed suit against the Federal Reserve in an action Judge Abrams presided over, alleging that she was terminated due to reporting to her superiors that the Goldman Sachs Group did not have a firmwide conflict-of-interest policy. Segarra alleged that her termination violated the whistleblower protection provisions of the Federal Deposit Insurance Act,. On April 23, 2014, Judge Abrams dismissed the suit. The Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit affirmed the dismissal, calling some of Segarra's arguments, "entirely speculative, meritless and frankly quite silly." In 2016, Abrams was assigned to preside over a case in which Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein are accused by the plaintiff of having raped her in the 1990s, when the plaintiff was thirteen years old. The complaint was voluntarily dismissed without prejudice by the Plaintiff in September 2016. In January 2017, Abrams was assigned to preside over a pending case in which Donald Trump was sued by a nonprofit group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, over an alleged violation by Trump of the Foreign and Domestic Emoluments Clauses of the United States Constitution. On July 11, 2017, Judge Abrams recused herself from the case when her husband, Greg Andres, began talks to join Special Counsel Robert Mueller's staff investigating Russian meddling in the 2016 election. In April 2018, Judge Abrams presided over the trial of an ex-U.S. Army Sergeant and two other men who were convicted of participating in a murder for hire of a woman in the Philippines. The primary cooperating witness was Paul Le Roux, a notorious crime lord who testified about the covert world of mercenary work as well as selling missile technology to Iran and smuggling weapons to rebels and warlords. In July 2018, Judge Abrams presided over the trial in an action brought by Enrichetta Ravina, a former finance professor at Columbia University's Business School against Columbia and a more senior tenured professor, Geert Bekaert, for sex discrimination and retaliation. The jury found that Ravina had not been sexually harassed but that she had been retaliated against by Bekaert, who wrote at least 30 emails calling Ravina “evil” and “crazy,” including to a number of industry players at the Federal Reserve Bank, top-tier universities and economic journals.
