Dinallo Names Kenny Insurance Department Special Counsel

• by New York State Insurance Department

NEW YORK, NY (01/15/2008)(readMedia)-- Superintendent of Insurance Eric R. Dinallo today announced that John J. Kenny has been named Special Counsel to the Superintendent, with duties to include performing special projects for the Superintendent. Kenny joins the Department from the New York Liquidation Bureau, where he was Deputy Chief of Staff.

“John Kenny is an outstanding addition to the Insurance Department and I’m pleased to welcome him,” Superintendent Dinallo said. “He did a superb job as part of the turnaround leadership team at the Liquidation Bureau and I expect both the Department and I to benefit from his input and advice.”

Kenny served as Deputy Chief of Staff at the Liquidation Bureau, a non-governmental agency with more than 400 employees that liquidates and rehabilitates insolvent insurance companies on behalf of the Superintendent, since May 2007. There, he was responsible for a wide variety of the Bureau’s operations, including addressing various operational, management, financial and legal issues.

From March 2006 until the election in November 2006, Kenny was with Spitzer 2006, the Campaign for Governor. There he conducted and supervised a variety of finance and compliance activities. After the election, he was named Senior Appointments Advisor to the Spitzer Transition Team and in the office of the Appointments Secretary in the subsequent administration. Through January 2007, he conducted and managed various facets of recruitment, interviewing and selection of candidates for commissioner and other agency head positions for Gov.-elect and Governor Spitzer.

Before entering public life, Kenny was in private practice with the law firm of Otterbourg, Steindler, Houston and Rosen, P.C., for 13 years.

Kenny earned a Bachelor of Science degree cum laude in accounting from the University of Scranton in 1985 and a J.D. from Rutgers School of Law in 1992. At Rutgers, he was managing editor of the Rutgers Law Review. Prior to attending law school, Kenny was an accountant and financial analyst.

The Upper East Side resident is married with three children. A marathoner who competed in the New York City Marathon in 1983 and 1994, Kenny is a member of the Board of Directors of the second Harlem Success Academy Charter School, which currently is being organized.

He succeeds Zachary Weiss, who as Special Counsel played an important role in the State’s workers’ compensation reform process and was named Chair of the Workers’ Compensation Board by Governor Eliot Spitzer.

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