Queens County District Attorney
State prosecutor in New York
The District Attorney of Queens County is the elected district attorney for Queens County in New York State, coterminous with the New York City borough of Queens. The office is responsible for the prosecution of violations of New York state laws. (Federal law violations in Queens are prosecuted by the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York). The current Queens County District Attorney is Melinda Katz, who assumed the duties of the office on January 1, 2020. There was an inauguration on January 6, 2020 at her alma mater, St. Johns University.
History
In a legislative act of February 12, 1796, New York State was divided into seven districts, each with its own Assistant Attorney General. Queens County was part of the First District, which also included Kings, Richmond, Suffolk, and Westchester counties. (At that time, Queens County included much of present-day Nassau County, and Westchester County included present-day Bronx County.) In 1801, the office of Assistant Attorney General was renamed District Attorney. At the same time, New York County was added to the First District.
The public source identifies “Queens County District Attorney” as state prosecutor in New York. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Queens, County and District.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 16, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q18739569. The first chronological checks are 2020, 1796 and 1801.
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This entry incorporates text from “Queens County District Attorney” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.