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Mr. Durkin graduated from Chicago’s Leo H.S. in 1964 and received a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Notre Dame in 1968. He attended the University of San Francisco School of Law from 1970 to 1973, and received the degree of Juris Doctor in June of 1973. In his senior year of law school, Mr. Durkin was the student advisor to the U.S.F. Criminal Law Clinic at the Marin County, California Public Defender’s Office. Upon graduation, Mr. Durkin served as a law clerk to the Honorable James B. Parsons of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois from August, 1973, to July, 1974. From August, 1974, to April, 1978, Mr. Durkin was in private practice in Chicago specializing in federal criminal cases, and tried a large number of jury cases as a panel attorney for the Federal Defender Program, Inc. of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois.

From April, 1978, to March, 1984, he served as an Assistant United States Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois under United States Attorneys Thomas P. Sullivan and Dan K. Webb. In his six years at the U.S. Attorneys Office, four and one-half years were spent in the Special Prosecutions Division, the section primarily responsible for the investigation and prosecution of the major white collar fraud and political corruption cases. Mr. Durkin investigated and prosecuted several of the cases involving systemic corruption in the Electrical Inspection Department of the City of Chicago, as well as two major Medicaid fraud cases and a variety of income tax evasion matters involving political corruption. He was also responsible for the investigation and prosecution of the first federal criminal civil rights open housing case in the Chicago area, which involved a racially motivated bombing in Burnham, Illinois.

Since leaving the U.S. Attorney's Office in early 1984, Mr. Durkin has been in private practice specializing in federal and state court criminal defense matters locally and nationwide.

Mr. Durkin has been on the faculties and taught Trial Advocacy for a number of years at: The John Marshall Law School; Loyola University; The National Institute of Trial Advocacy; and the U.S. Department of Justice Attorney General's Advocacy Institute. In the Fall of 2008, Mr. Durkin served as guest lecturer at the Duke University School of Law and the Duke Law Guantanamo Defense Clinic.

Mr. Durkin is currently Chairman of the Expert Panel for Capital Appointments for the United States District Court for the Northern District of Indiana, and serves as well as a liaison to the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit’s Judicial Council Committee to Study the Appointment of Counsel for Indigent Habeas Corpus Petitioners under a Sentence of Death. He continues to serve as a panel attorney for the Federal Defender Program, Inc., for the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois in Chicago; and is a member of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, the American Bar Association’s Committees on Criminal Justice and International Law, the Union League Club of Chicago’s Public Affairs Subcommittee on the Administration of Justice, and the Board of Directors of the John Howard Association. He presently serves on the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyer’s Select Committee on Military Tribunals and Terrorism, and is also a past member of the Board of Directors of the Illinois Attorneys for Criminal Justice. Mr. Durkin also serves as a member of the Advisory Committee of the Center for Civil and Human Rights of the University of Notre Dame Law School.

Among his more notable cases, in 1985, Mr. Durkin obtained the only acquittal in the federal investigation of the Lake County Indiana Court System in the defense of Attorney Thomas Mullins who had been charged with mail fraud, bribery and income tax investigation. In 1990, he obtained a not guilty verdict on all charges on behalf of William J. Stoecker, who was charged with federal bankruptcy fraud arising from the highly publicized Grabill Corporation bankruptcy. In 1997, he obtained an outright acquittal on behalf of Gary City Councilman, Frank Ballard, who had been charged with bribery and extortion allegations arising from the federal investigation of the Gary Sanitary District. In addition to these matters, Mr. Durkin was also involved in the successful defense of several commodities traders in the highly publicized federal investigation of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, as well as having served in 1997 & 1998 as court appointed counsel in defense of one of the Chicago Police Officers charged in the corruption investigation into the Gresham Police District, as well as the widely publicized 1996 federal investigation and trial of the high ranking members of the Gangster Disciples street gang. Mr. Durkin also served as lead counsel for Jason Powell in an Indiana capital murder case that attracted national attention into an alleged racially motivated shooting that occurred in November of 1999, in Elkhart, Indiana. In August of 2002, on behalf of former Town of Cicero Treasurer, Joseph DeChicio, he obtained the only acquittal in the very highly publicized federal criminal case of United States v. Spano, et al., an eight defendant public corruption trial involving the Town of Cicero and its President, Betty Loren-Maltese.

Mr. Durkin also served as co-counsel for the Global Relief Foundation, Inc., of Bridgeview, Illinois, one of the Islamic charities whose assets were blocked after September 11, 2001, under provisions of the U.S. PATRIOT Act by the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control. Mr. Durkin was also lead trial counsel for Matt Hale, the self proclaimed Pontifex Maximus of the World Church of the Creator, an avowed white supremacist organization, on widely publicized charges that Hale solicited the murder of U.S. District Court Judge Joan H. Lefkow. Mr. Durkin also represented Dr. Abdelhaleem Ashqar on federal charges in Chicago pertaining to allegations with respect to providing material support to the Specially Designated Terrorist Organization, Hamas. In the summer of 2006, Mr. Durkin represented Robert Sorich, the Deputy Director of the Mayor’s Office of Intergovernmental Affairs, in a widely publicized hiring fraud prosecution in the federal court. Most recently, in May of 2008 Mr. Durkin obtained an acquittal on all counts for Michael J. Mahoney the former Executive Director of the John Howard Association on charges of bribery involving health care contracts with the Illinois Department of Corrections. Mr. Durkin also serves as counsel, along with the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York City, for two detainees at Guantanamo Bay, for which he and his firm, along with all other Guantanamo counsel, recently received the Frederick Douglas Human Rights Award from the Southern Center for Human Rights. Mr. Durkin is also a participant in the John Adams Project, a joint effort of the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers to provide civilian defense counsel to assist the military lawyers in the trial of the five High Value Detainees charged in the Military Commissions at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba with conspiring to orchestrate the September 11th attacks of the World Trade Center and Pentagon.

Thomas Anthony Durkin

Janis D. Roberts

Augustus F. Moss

Mr. Durkin
Direct Line: 312.981.0123
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Mr. Durkin’s Legal Assistant
John Leahy
Direct Line: 312.981.0126
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Durkin & Roberts
Attorneys and Counselors

The Monadnock Building
53 West Jackson Boulevard, Suite 615
Chicago, IL 60604

2446 North Clark Street
Chicago, IL 60614

ph: 312.913.9300  |  fax: 312.913.9235

email: info@durkinroberts.com