Dennis J. Saffran

Dennis Saffran is an appellate attorney and political and public policy writer and consultant based in Queens, New York. He has served as chief of appellate litigation for Nassau  County, NY, chief lawyer of the New York State Division of Housing, and a Special Assistant to the New York State Attorney General, and was the founder of the New York office and then national Executive Director of the Center for the Community Interest, a public interest group that supported anti-crime and quality-of-life policies like those of the Giuliani Administration.

Dennis has litigated constitutional and municipal law cases in the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, the New York State Court of Appeals, and other appellate courts. He has also written on legal, political and public policy issues for various publications including the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal, The Federalist, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Daily News and New York Post, American Greatness, PJ Media, The American Spectator and National Review Online, and has been a guest on various television and radio news and talk shows. 

In 2001 and 2013, Dennis was the Republican candidate for the New York City Council from Northeast Queens, one of the few competitive districts in the city, receiving 48% of the vote and losing by a 1% margin in by far the closest election in the city in 2001. 

Dennis grew up in Queens and is an honors graduate of Forest Hills High School, Harvard College and New York University Law School. He and his wife Jane Stewart Saffran live in Douglaston, New York, where they raised their two children: Kristina, 27, the Co-founder and Executive Director of Project HEAL, a nonprofit that raises money for treatment for young people with eating disorders, and Nick, 25, an assistant editor at the Manhattan Institute.