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Prominent defense attorney Alan Zegas, shown here at his Chatham law office, has never shied from criticizing Gov. Chris Christie. Now, he's at the center of a scandal that threatens the governor's career.

(John Munson/The Star-Ledger)

TRENTON — In 2008, U.S. Attorney Chris

Christie was on a tear. His office had won federal corruption convictions against more than 100 New Jersey public officials, and in April, he added a crown jewel with a guilty verdict against Democratic Newark Mayor Sharpe James.

But during sentencing, the boastful Christie was handed a rare rebuke. His office was seeking nearly 20 years in prison for James, who had illegally steered land to his mistress. The federal judge, William Martini, lit into prosecutors for asking for the sentence, calling it “an extreme injustice.”

From the front row, Christie shook his head in apparent disgust. Martini said he would not be “intimidated.” And across the room, soaking it all in from the defense table, was one of the state’s most prominent criminal lawyers: Alan Zegas.

“We felt vindicated by the judge’s comments because it seemed politics did, to some degree, drive the case,” Zegas, 61, said in a recent interview with The Star-Ledger, noting Christie was then the favored Republican prospect for governor.

Now six years later, Zegas is again at odds with Christie as the attorney for David Wildstein, the governor’s former ally who may hold the answer to who was behind the September lane closings at the George Washington Bridge.

But this bout carries far higher stakes for Christie, whose poll numbers are nose-diving and prospects for the White House dimming as federal prosecutors at his former office dig into the scandal and a joint legislative committee forges ahead with its own investigation.

And Christie will find no comfort in Zegas, who has battled him in court, accused him of playing politics with criminal prosecutions and written scathing op-eds about his attacks on judicial independence, once comparing him to King George III of England.

“I don’t know Mr. Wildstein, but he seems wily, so it’s possible he was sending a message to the governor, that I’m going to choose someone you might not like,” said Nancy Erika Smith, an employment lawyer and friend of Zegas. “Sometimes lawyers just act and don’t think. Alan plays chess.”

‘RENAISSANCE LAWYER’

Zegas, who was born in Newark and graduated with a law degree from Rutgers in 1981, said he became a lawyer to defend the “little, powerless person against the powerful forces of government.”

He began his own practice in 1984 after a two-year clerkship for U.S. District Judge H. Lee Sarokin and a brief stint at Robinson, Wayne, Levin, Riccio & Lasala in Newark, where he worked on First Amendment cases and found his passion for criminal defense.

Friends described him as principled, brainy and kind, a “renaissance lawyer” who can impress not just with his knowledge of the law, but also his piano skills, professional photography, marathon runs in New York City and the countless biographies he’s read.

He sleeps only three to four hours each night, napping when he can. He seizes on the human element of cases and maps out defenses like an army general thinking three steps ahead.

In 1993, Zegas defended Bryant Grober, one of four high school student athletes who stood trial in the Glen Ridge rape case, and won an acquittal on sexual assault charges.

In 1995, he was appointed by a state judge to represent John Martini, who was sentenced to death for the 1989 murder of a Fair Lawn businessman and wanted public defenders to stop fighting for his life.

“In my experience, it will be one of the most — if not the most — difficult cases I’ve ever handled,” Zegas said.

The state Supreme Court in 1996 ruled Martini could not stop public defenders from appealing his sentence. But in 1999, just 41 days before he was scheduled to die, Martini told Zegas he had spoken with a nun and wanted to live. Zegas said at the time he never viewed Martini’s wish as an endorsement of the death penalty, which he opposes.

“His interests are always the interests of his client,” Smith said.

Martini was spared the death penalty after Gov. Jon Corzine signed legislation abolishing New Jersey’s capital punishment law in 2007. He died in prison two years later.

A CHRISTIE HISTORY

Being a lawyer has not stopped Zegas from expressing his opinions — and on Christie, he has had more than a few.

When Christie, a former Morris County freeholder and lobbyist, was nominated to be U.S. attorney in 2001, his lack of prosecutorial experience made him a target of Zegas, who said he worried because the position is “very demanding.”

In 2003, the two sparred in federal court when Christie tried his first case as a criminal prosecutor. Christie told the court Hemant Lakhani, a British businessman, had confessed to trying to sell a missile to an FBI informant and should be held in jail. Zegas challenged Christie’s authority to hold Lakhani without providing at least some evidence.

“Alan Zegas has a long history in this court of saying things that, at times, puzzle me,” Christie said after the hearing.

Zegas said Christie’s comment was “not only inappropriate but utterly baseless,” noting it was the first time that Christie had ever met him. Lakhani was later held in jail.

In 2008, Zegas took a shot at Christie when he resigned as U.S. attorney, saying he was too quick to publicly ridicule defendants before conviction.

“If I had one wish, it would be that he had not engaged in as many press conferences,” Zegas said. But that was tame compared with two op-ed pieces he wrote for The Star-Ledger, in 2010 and 2011.

In the first, Zegas said Christie’s decision not to renominate state Supreme Court Justice John Wallace Jr. was a “callous usurpation of political opportunity at the justice’s expense.”

“Christie’s game was to build up a crime-fighting brand name so he could get to the governorship,” he wrote. “Having undertaken as his first official gubernatorial act the public bullying and vilifying of already underpaid teachers, Christie has trained his sights upon Wallace.”

In 2011, Zegas again attacked Christie after state Superior Court Judge Linda Feinberg ruled a law requiring judges to contribute more to their pension and medical insurance plans violated the state constitution.

Christie called the ruling “self-interested and outrageous.” Zegas followed by likening him to King George III, who the colonists fled because he “made judges dependent on his will along for the tenure of their office, and the amount and payment of their salaries.”

“The parallels between England’s tyrannical monarch and Gov. Chris Christie are remarkable,” Zegas wrote.

BRIDGE SCANDAL

Now at the center of the largest scandal of Christie’s career, Zegas insists he has no interest in scoring points at the governor’s expense. But judging by his legal maneuvers so far, defending Wildstein might also mean turning Christie’s political world upside down.

“This case is more complex than most in my career, because there are so many avenues that have to be navigated simultaneously,” Zegas said. “There’s very large political interests that loom over all of this.”

Wildstein — a Christie-backed official at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which controls the bridge — resigned in December after he was outed as the one who gave the order at the agency to close the lanes.

David Wildstein, left, with his attorney Alan Zegas, during a hearing Jan. 9 before the Assembly Transportation Committee investigating the lane closings at the George Washington Bridge.

Zegas said Wildstein came to him that month. They previously met maybe once, he said, and their daughters spent a year in the same Jewish school in West Orange. His first task was responding to a subpoena issued by the Legislature seeking records related to the closings.

That prospect seemed to rankle the governor’s office. Zegas said he asked Charles McKenna, Christie’s chief of staff at the time, whether the governor intended to assert executive privilege. But McKenna referred him to the Port Authority, Zegas said.

He then spoke with an attorney at the authority who referred him back to McKenna. In the following days, Zegas said, McKenna and the Port Authority called him “numerous times” seeking copies of the documents Wildstein intended to provide to the Legislature.

“I did not answer any of the calls,” Zegas said. McKenna could not be reached for comment. The governor’s office and the Port Authority did not return requests for comment.

The documents blew the scandal open. They included an e-mail from Bridget Anne Kelly, Christie’s deputy chief of staff, to Wildstein stating, “Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee.” The disclosures prompted Christie to fire Kelly, cut ties with political strategist Bill Stepien, and apologize.

Zegas made his first public appearance with Wildstein at a legislative hearing Jan. 9. Wildstein refused to talk, and Zegas, sitting next to him, said: “The Fifth Amendment is one of the most sacrosanct rights any person has.”

But, dangling a carrot, Zegas said his client would be willing to talk if he was granted immunity in every investigation.

“He has knowledge of many things, he would be forthright about what he knows, but he needs to be adequately protected so that he’s not in harm’s way in making disclosures that are much sought after,” Zegas said in his interview with The Star-Ledger, declining to discuss specifics.

Zegas again knocked Christie on his heels Jan. 31, just as the governor took the spotlight at the Super Bowl, when he sent a letter to the Port Authority suggesting the governor was untruthful when he said he had learned of the closings after access had been restored.

“Evidence exists as well tying Mr. Christie to having knowledge of the lane closures, during the period when the lanes were closed, contrary to what the governor stated publicly in a two-hour press conference,” Zegas wrote, sparking another round of damaging publicity.

The governor’s office issued a statement repeating that Christie had no knowledge of the lane closures before they happened and saying the governor “denies Mr. Wildstein’s lawyer’s other assertions.”

The bombshell was part of Zegas’ request the Port Authority reconsider its decision not to pay Wildstein’s legal bills, which noted that no decision had been made about the legal bills of another former official and Christie loyalist caught up in the scandal, Bill Baroni.

“Alan does not do anything with respect to any statements made without carefully determining what impact it’s going to have, from a public relations point of view and a legal point of view,” said Thomas Ashley, co-counsel on the James case. “When he’s involved, it’s going to be a fight to the finish.”

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