William Garfinkel
Bill Garfinkel served as a United States Magistrate Judge in Bridgeport, Connecticut from 1996 to 2021. He is a native of Charleston, South Carolina, and received his B.A. from Yale College in 1977, summa cum laude, with departmental honors in History. Judge Garfinkel pursued graduate studies in American and British History at Yale before attending Yale Law School. After law school and a clerkship, he served as an Assistant District Attorney in New York County, and went on to teach law before working as a litigator in private practice. Judge Garfinkel has created and taught college seminars at Yale, entitled “Crime and Criminal Justice in America” and “Child, Family and State.” He is an Associate Fellow of Yale’s Berkeley College and teaches “American Education and the Law” for the Education Studies Program. Judge Garfinkel holds a black belt in Tang Soo Do and has been a student at the Center for Taiji and Qigong Studies in New York. He is married to a school social worker, and they have two sons.