Joseph Krakora was sworn in as Public Defender on June 28, 2011. He joined the Office of the Public Defender in 1986 and has held numerous positions in the agency since that time. He served as an Assistant Public Defender and Director of Capital and Special Litigation from 2002 until 2010. As Director of Capital Litigation, he handled numerous death penalty cases until the abolition of the death penalty in December 2007. He supervised several other parts of the agency in his capacity as an Assistant Public Defender. He spent a number of years as both a staff attorney and a manager in the Essex Adult Region where he developed his reputation as one of the top criminal defense attorneys in New Jersey. He graduated from Princeton University in 1976 and from Cornell University Law School in 1983.