Associate Justice Nancy E. Smith

Justice Nancy E. Smith has been presented the 2018 Dolores Denman Award by the Greater Rochester Association for Women Attorneys (GRAWA). The award, named in honor of the late Fourth Department Presiding Justice M. Dolores Denman, was established in 2000, and recognizes the accomplishments of a jurist in promoting the fair and equal administration of justice which has a significant impact on women and minorities. The award also recognizes conduct, either in the form of a single event or over a lifetime, which raises the awareness of the inequities in the justice system. In 2000, the late Chief Judge Judith S. Kaye was the first recipient of the Dolores Denman Award.

Justice Smith began her legal career as an Assistant District Attorney in Monroe County in 1982, where she worked until 1984 and again from 1985 to 1992 (with a year away in private practice with the firm of Greisberger, Zicari, McConville, Cooman, Morin and Welch). She was elected to her first judicial office as a Monroe County Court Judge and took the bench in January, 1993. Justice Smith was also assigned to the Livingston County Family, Supreme and County Courts, and presided over matters in Ontario, Rensselaer, Saratoga, Yates and Sullivan counties. She was appointed by Governor George Pataki to the New York State Supreme Court in the Seventh Judicial District in 1997, and was elected to that office for a term beginning in January of 1998. Governor Pataki then designated her to the Appellate Division, Second Department in March of 1999, and reassigned her to the Fourth Department in 2004. Justice Smith is a graduate of Allegheny College and Vermont Law School, and has served on many civic and charitable boards, bar association and Office of Court Administration committees, and has mentored and in structed lawyers at many levels. She serves on the OCA Family Violence Task Force and is a member of the Board of Directors of the Legal Aid Society, and has served on the Boards of the Pittsford Youth Service, Inc., and GRAWA.

Congratulations to Justice Smith for receiving this prestigious honor!

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