DA Brian Green focusing on recruiting new prosecutors

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Three weeks into taking over as Monroe County District Attorney, Brian Green says the most pressing issue he’s facing is recruitment and retention of attorneys.

Green said the office currently has 90 ADAs and eight vacancies, but he’s hoping the change in administration, and a change in culture, will make it a “more inviting place” to prospective ADAs.

“If someone thought about coming to this office in the past and didn’t for whatever reason, if they’re not happy in their job, maybe they’ll think about coming back and applying again,” he said.

But another factor that might be hard to overcome is the disparity in pay for new prosecutors. Starting salary for new ADAs is about $85,000 a year, at least $20,000 less than the starting pay at many law firms.

“It’s government, so you’re never going to make the same as private practice. That’s a sacrifice that you make going into public service,” Green said.

Green was appointed by Gov. Kathy Hochul to replace Sandra Doorley, who left office at the end of August. Doorley, who served as DA since 2012, announced her retirement in July, two weeks after being censured by the New York State Commission on Prosecutorial Conduct for her behavior during a traffic stop in the town of Webster in April 2024.

Green was an ADA from 2008 to2018 and served as deputy chief of the major felony bureau under Doorley. He was senior deputy Monroe County attorney since March 2020, and an Irondequoit town justice since January 2024.

Green’s appointment will run through 2026. A special election for the position is scheduled to take place in November 2026. Green, a Democrat, said he plans to be on the ballot to stay in the office.

Green received a bachelor’s degree in history from SUNY Brockport in 2003 and his law degree from Capital University Law School in Columbus Ohio in 2006.

When he started law school, Green never planned to be a practicing attorney. After law school he planned on getting a master’s degree in public policy, and going to work in natural resource management.

But he got an externship with a federal judge during his first summer in law school and got hired full time for his second year.

That was such a positive experience that Green gave up his plan to get a master’s degree in public policy.

At Brockport, one of his professors was Tim Donaher, who was an assistant Monroe County Public Defender at the time.

“He made a huge impression on me, and we stayed in touch after that,” Green said.

After finishing law school and working in Ohio for a while, Green decided to move back to the Rochester area where he applied for a job at the DA’s office.

Donaher, who had become the Monroe County Public Defender, suggested that Green work for him.

“At the time though, that wasn’t really what I was thinking because, very close in time to when we moved home, we had a really bad burglary at our condo in Ohio. So, my head was really geared more towards prosecution at the time,” Green said, noting that nobody was ever arrested for the burglary at his home.

“It made me want to try to hold people accountable who do those things to other people,” he said.

Green said he left the DA’s office in 2018 because “it just didn’t feel like a good fit for me anymore.”

“I had started to disagree with some of the policies and part of the environment of the office,” he said.

He went to work at the Justice Center for the Protection of People with Special Needs, “a niche prosecutorial agency for the state.”

Now that he’s DA, Green is planning to reinvigorate the office’s training programs.

“There are some documents and things that describe what ADA’s are supposed to do for the office, but as far as I’m aware there’s never been an actual training program for new ADAs,” he said.

“Most new ADAs come right out of law school. It’s their first job in practice, it’s an incredibly important job, and it never made sense to me that there wasn’t an actual training program,” he said.

Monica O’Brien, chief of the grand jury bureau, is also the director of attorney training.

But Green plans to make attorney training a full-time job on its own. He said that the person in that role will be responsible for new attorney training, continuing legal education (CLE) courses, and, with input from the administration, writing policy and procedure for the office, plus deal with issues that are “popping up.”

In New York state, all attorneys are required to complete 24 CLE credits every two years. In the past, the DA’s office had a much more robust continuing legal education (CLE) program for attorneys.

CLE courses are still offered internally, “but I don’t think we do enough,” Green said.

Twice each year, all the ADAs used to spend a Saturday taking seven hours of CLE courses, so that, by the end of their two-year registration period, they had more than enough CLEs that were appropriate for the work they do,” Green said.

That gradually changed over the years to CLEs being offered at lunchtime.

“I’m impressed with the trainings that are offered, but, because it’s at lunchtime, it’s difficult to make it mandatory because people are still in court, are getting back from court, or preparing for an afternoon hearing,” Green said.

So Green plans to revert to mandatory Saturday training twice a year.

“It’s no fun to give up a Saturday. It’s a struggle for people with families, but I think it’s critical. We used to do it, and I think it’s really important to go back to that kind of model so that we can ensure participation, and ensure a significant quantity of quality education,” he said.

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