Jeffrey Maddrey, the former NYPD chief of department who resigned in late 2024 amid allegations he traded overtime for sex, is suing New York City for cutting off the taxpayer-funded lawyers who had been defending him in four lawsuits.
The suit was filed in early June in Manhattan Supreme Court by Maddrey’s attorney, Lambros Y. Lambrou, and first reported by the New York Post. Lambrou argues the city’s Law Department yanked the money for his client’s legal bills in bad faith, describing the decision in an April email filed with the court as a “politically motivated absurdity.”
When a city employee gets sued over something they did on the job, the city usually pays for their legal defense, a standard practice that covers everyone from beat cops to caseworkers. Under then-Mayor Eric Adams, the Law Department agreed in 2024 to cover Maddrey in four civil suits and assigned him the firm Wilson Elser. Those suits allege Maddrey took part in retaliation, workplace discrimination, and covering up sexual harassment claims against another Adams ally, retired NYPD official Timothy Pearson.
Then the administration changed hands. According to the Post, Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s Corporation Counsel, Steven Banks, who heads the Law Department, said in a March letter filed with the court that investigators had “obtained evidence” that Maddrey violated NYPD rules and lied during an interview held to determine whether he still qualified for taxpayer-funded coverage. Under the state’s General Municipal Law, the city can drop an employee’s defense if that employee broke agency rules or refused to cooperate.
Maddrey’s camp says it has never seen that evidence. When Lambrou asked what the new proof was, he wrote, the city’s response was “devoid of any facts upon which your determination was based.” His lawsuit argues Maddrey has been completely forthright and asks a judge to force the city to show its cards. “It’s our position you are acting in bad faith in making your initial determination and are furthering that bad faith in failing to respond to our request for the facts,” Lambrou wrote to Law Department attorneys. “We look forward to having the court review this politically motivated absurdity.”
The lawsuit frames the cutoff as a money move, noting the switch came as the city sat “in the throes of a multi-billion dollar budget deficit” after two years of paying his bills. A Law Department spokesperson told the Post: “The Corporation Counsel stands by his decision. We will respond to the filing accordingly.”
Pearson, Adams’s longtime friend and former senior adviser for public safety, connects the four suits. Hell Gate has chronicled the pile of lawsuits filed by NYPD officers who say Pearson sexually harassed them and then retaliated when they reported him, several of which name Maddrey as the enforcer Pearson pulled in to “take care of it.” Pearson resigned from City Hall in October 2024, the city’s Department of Investigation later found he gave false statements and abused his authority during a migrant shelter confrontation, and the FBI raided his home in 2024 as part of a sprawling probe into Adams’s inner circle. Pearson has denied wrongdoing and has not been charged.
Maddrey served as the NYPD’s highest-ranking uniformed officer from November 2022 to November 2024. As Hell Gate has documented, he stepped down within days of Lieutenant Quathisha Epps accusing him in the Post of sexual assault and of demanding sex in exchange for letting her rack up unlimited overtime. Maddrey called the relationship a consensual “office fling” and denied the allegations. A federal probe into the sex-for-overtime allegations is ongoing.
Featured image: Ajay Suresh via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)
