Queens Dems pick candidates for Civil Court
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Sheridan Chu, Indira Khan, Eve Cho Guillergan and Jennifer Tubridy were among the seven candidates picked by the Queens County Democratic party to run on their party line for the upcoming primary election for Civil Court judge. Attorneys Oma Phillips, Thomas Wright-Fernandez and Gail Adams were also nominated by the party. Photos via campaigns/Eagle file photo/via Tubridy
By Jacob Kaye
The Queens County Democratic Party recently tapped seven judges to run on their party’s line in the upcoming Democratic primary election.
With seven upcoming vacancies on the borough’s Civil Court, the Queens Dems district leaders said they were backing attorneys Sheridan Chu, Indira Khan, Oma Phillips, Thomas Wright-Fernandez, Eve Cho Guillergan, Gail Adams and Jennifer Tubridy in the primary race for the bench.
Chu, Khan and Phillips will run for countywide positions on the lower Civil Court while the other candidates will run for spots in separate judicial districts.
Wright-Fernandez will run for the open position in the 1st District, covering parts of Astoria, Long Island City, Woodside and Sunnyside; Guillergan will run in the 2nd District, which covers most of remainder of Western Queens, including Elmhurst, East Elmhurst, Jackson Heights, Corona, Sunnyside, Woodside and parts of Forest Hills; Adams will run in the 4th District, covering parts of Jamaica, Rochdale, Springfield Gardens, Cambria Heights, Hollis, Queens Village and Glenn Oaks; and Tubridy will run in the 5th District, which covers the Rockaway peninsula.
With support from the borough’s Democratic Party, which is led by Rep. Gregory Meeks, the candidates are in the process of collecting petition signatures in order to firm up a spot on the ballot. Tapping into the party’s resources, it’s likely all seven candidates make the ballot.
Two other Democratic candidates not backed by the county party – attorneys John Ciafone and Julie Milner – are currently attempting to make it onto the ballot for election day, according to records with the state’s Campaign Finance Board.
Both Ciafone and Milner have previously mounted unsuccessful runs for Queens’ Civil Court. Ciafone finished second in a three-way race in the Democratic primary in the 6th Municipal District in 2023. Milner, who once appeared to call for the execution of President Joe Biden on social media, finished third in four-way primary race for a countywide Civil Court position last year.
The Queens County Democratic Party made the unusual move of announcing their support of their chosen candidates on their website, which is infrequently updated.
“With all the turmoil stemming out of a dangerous, Trump-led White House and GOP Congress, it is more important than ever to focus on good local leadership,” the announcement reads.
“From mayor to City Council down to Civil Court judge, New Yorkers will be marching to the polls this November to elect a new set of local public officials,” it continued. “As Democrats, let's make sure we give them a set of great choices to choose from.”
The party also posted each of their candidates’ resumes to the site. The last time it shared the resumes of Democratic judicial candidates was in 2022, ahead of the party’s judicial convention, where delegates vote to decide which Supreme Court candidates are to appear on the party’s line in the November general election.
A representative for the Queens Dems did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Queens Dems’ candidates
Chu, who lives in Forest Hills, currently runs a private practice law firm. He previously worked as an attorney at Travelers Insurance.
The St. John’s University School of Law grad has spent some time working in the court system, serving as a court attorney in Manhattan. Chu also worked as a pro se attorney at the Red Hook Community Justice Center from 2012 until 2016.
Like Chu, Khan currently runs a private practice. The Civil Court candidate also serves on the borough’s 18B panel, representing indigent clients. Prior to starting her own practice, Khan worked at several law firms, including Robert DiDio & Associates and Camhi & Min, LLC.
Khan, who went to Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, got her start in law by working for several months with the Brooklyn district attorney’s office, where she worked as an assistant district attorney in the crimes against children bureau.
Phillips is currently a court attorney in the city’s Family Court, and previously worked as a court attorney in Criminal Court and in State Supreme Court. Phillips also spent time as an attorney for the U.S. Postal Service and the city’s Department of Correction.
The CUNY Law School grad began their career in the law as an ADA with the Bronx DA’s office.
Wright-Fernandez, who graduated from Fordham University School of Law, currently serves as a principal law clerk in Queens County Supreme Court. Before joining the court system, he ran his own private practice for a little over a decade.
Guillergan has run a private practice for around 20 years and also has held various leadership positions within the New York City Bar Association, where she currently serves as the director of its Small Law Firm Center.
For the past year, Adams has worked as a court referee in Queens Supreme Court, Civil Term. She has worked in the court system since 2013 and has also served as a law clerk. Adams previously worked at a number of private firms and ran her own practice. She began her career at the Legal Aid Society in Nassau County.
Tubridy is currently serving on the city’s Criminal Court bench after being appointed by Mayor Eric Adams to the position in 2023.
The judge previously worked as a court attorney in Manhattan and as a principal law clerk in Queens.
Tubridy served as an ADA at the Queens district attorney’s office for a decade and as a deputy clerk in U.S. District Court for several years.
The insurgents
Ciafone has not only run for Civil Court previously, but he’s also run for City Council. The Western Queens attorney ran in the Democratic primary for District 22 in 2021, finishing third in the six-way race won by Tiffany Cabán.
The St. John's School of Law graduate has managed his private practice in Astoria for years, working in personal injury law.
During his run for Civil Court in 2023, Ciafone was found to be “not approved” for the bench by the New York City Bar Association.
Milner is a civil rights attorney from Western Queens. The City University of New York School of Law graduate will be making her second attempt to make it onto the bench after an unsuccessful run last year.
The Eagle reported in 2024 that an X account under Milner’s name had featured a number of posts supporting issues championed by the far-right, including bans on LGBTQ+ books – which she called “filthy, pornographic smut” – in school libraries.
On at least two occasions, Milner appeared to call for the execution of President Joe Biden on her X account.
“Impeach, remove, indict, execute,” Milner tweeted twice in January 2023 in response to posts about Biden’s alleged improper handling of classified documents.
Queens GOP candidates
Like the Queens County Democratic Party, the Queens County Republican Party also selected a handful of candidates to run on its party line for Civil Court.
Without any current challengers, the three candidates picked by the party don’t appear to be headed toward a contested primary.
Attorneys Stephen Dachtera, Mary-Ann Elizabeth Maloney and William Shanahan will run on the GOP’s line. Should they each make the ballot, they’d face off against the winners of the Democratic primary race in November.
Dachtera, a graduate of St. John’s University School of Law, is an attorney based in Richmond Hill. He primarily practices real estate law.
Maloney, a graduate of Touro Law, practices law in Brooklyn. She’s admitted to practice law in both New York and New Jersey.
Shanahan has run for a judicial position in Queens each of the past four years. The attorney and Queens native, who consistently has earned a “qualified” rating from the local bar associations, never came closer to winning one of his races as he did in the 2023 race for a vacancy in the Civil Court’s 6th Municipal District. He lost that race by around four percentage points to Evelyn Gong, the Democratic candidate.
Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that Guillergan is the director of the New York City Bar Association. She is the director of the NYCBA’s Small Law Firm Center.
