Madoff judge known as soft-spoken yet tough

By Martha Graybow

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The Bernard Madoff scandal is one of the biggest cases ever to land in Judge Denny Chin's courtroom. But the 15-year veteran of the federal bench is no stranger to high-profile legal disputes.

Chin, born in Hong Kong and the first Asian-American federal judge outside of California and Hawaii, was assigned to oversee the Madoff criminal case last week after the accused swindler signaled he planned to plead guilty.

Madoff appeared for the first time before the judge Tuesday on a potential conflict involving his lawyer and is expected to plead guilty on Thursday before a crowd of his angry former investors -- three months after he was charged with running a $50 billion investment ponzi scheme.

Judge Chin is known in the legal community as even-tempered, fair, witty and unafraid to make tough decisions. He was just 39 when tapped by former President Bill Clinton in 1994 for a judgeship in Manhattan federal court -- one of the busiest U.S. courthouses with cases ranging from terrorism trials to celebrity disputes to white-collar crime.

His cases have included a controversial 2006 ruling that nixed a state law toughening New York's ability to track sexual offenders.

Two years ago, he took the rare step of throwing out a jury's conviction of a former New York Stock Exchange floor trader accused of improperly trading ahead of customer orders, saying that prosecutors did not prove their fraud accusations.

"His soft-spoken, calm demeanor shouldn't be underestimated," said Randy Mastro, a partner at law firm Gibson Dunn & Crutcher LLP in New York and former deputy mayor under Rudy Giuliani. Mastro worked with Chin at the U.S. Attorney's Office in Manhattan in the 1980s.

"He will do the right thing. He is not a person who shies away from deciding a tough case or controversy."

Last month, Judge Chin sentenced the man who led a prostitution ring whose clients included former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer to 30 months in prison. Other cases that he presided over include a 2002 lawsuit against Penthouse magazine for running pictures of a topless sunbather misidentified as tennis star Anna Kournikova. The case later settled out of court.

FROM CHINA TO NEW YORK

Chin came to the United States with his parents at the age of two. His mother worked as a seamstress in the garment factories of New York's Chinatown, a stone's throw from the federal courthouse where he now works, while his father was a cook in Chinese restaurants.

Chin was a star student at the city's prestigious Stuyvesant High School before attending Princeton University and then Fordham Law School.

Chin clerked for a federal judge and then spent two years at law firm Davis Polk & Wardwell. In 1982, he became a lawyer in the civil division of the U.S. Attorney's Office in Manhattan, before returning to private practice in 1986.

He is married to a lawyer and has been active in the Asian-American Bar Association of New York and organizations including Hartley House, a community group in the Hell's Kitchen neighborhood of Manhattan where he grew up.

Mastro, Chin's former colleague at the U.S. Attorney's Office, said the judge is one of the most honorable people he has worked with and that he gives everyone a fair hearing.