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Craig Trainor

Craig Trainor

Director of Judicial Education at the Law and Economics Center, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University

 

 Craig W. Trainor is the Director of Judicial Education at the Law & Economics Center (the LEC) at the Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University. In this role, Trainor leads the LEC’s flagship Judicial Education Program (the JEP), which educates and trains American federal and state court judges in basic economics, accounting, statistics, regulatory analysis, and the principles necessary to maintain the rule of law, economic freedom, and constitutional limits on governmental authority and the administrative state. For over 40 years, the JEP has offered intellectually rigorous, balanced, and timely education programs to the nation’s judges on the belief that the principles of a free and just society depend on a knowledgeable and well-educated judiciary. Over 5,000 federal and state court judges from all 50 states and the District of Columbia, including four United States Supreme Court justices, have participated in at least one of the LEC’s judicial education programs.  

Before joining the LEC, Trainor practiced criminal defense and civil rights law for over 10 years in New York City, litigating cases in New York state court and the United States District Court for the Southern and Eastern Districts of New York. He tried numerous cases to verdict, from unlawful gun possession to racketeering conspiracy, and secured substantial financial compensation for his clients whose civil rights and liberties had been violated by state actors. 

Prior to founding Trainor Law, P.C., he served as a New York City prosecutor, an associate attorney at a boutique white collar criminal defense firm, and a law clerk to Chief Judge Frederick J. Scullin, Jr., United States District Court for the Northern District of New York. 

Trainor is a Haggerty-Richardson Fellow with the Conservative Partnership Institute, a member of the American Enterprise Institute’s Leadership Network, an elected member of the Philadelphia Society, and a member of the New York Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. Prior to relocating to the Washington, DC metropolitan area, Trainor sat on the Steering Committee of the Federalist Society’s New York City Lawyers Chapter and the Criminal Law Committee of the New York City Bar Association. He was also a member of the Manhattan Institute’s Young Leaders Circle and was a 2019 New York City Regional Fellow with the National Review Institute. His writing on the intersection of law, policy, and culture has appeared in the New York Post, National Review, City Journal, the Washington Examiner, the American Conservative, the Federalist, and the late Weekly Standard, among other publications.  

Trainor is a cum laude graduate of the Catholic University of America, Columbus School of Law, where he was a national moot court champion and an articles editor of the law school’s flagship journal, and a magna cum laude graduate of the City University of New York at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in government with honors. Born and raised in Brooklyn, Trainor was a longtime resident of Manhattan who now proudly calls Virginia home.