Zayas makes two new Appellate Term, Second Department appointments on Long Island

Two state Supreme Court justices on Long Island were promoted to take on new roles on Wednesday for a Brooklyn-based midlevel appeals court that’s still reeling from the sudden death of its presiding judge.

Chief Administrative Judge Joseph A. Zayas appointed Timothy S. Driscoll as the Appellate Term, Second Department’s presiding justice and Justice Maureen T. Liccione as an associate justice on the court.

Driscoll and Liccione’s “distinguished records on the bench make them ideal choices to assume their respective new posts,” Zayas said in a news release “I am confident that their wisdom, fairness, and clarity will benefit the important work of this esteemed court and those it serves.”

Driscoll succeeds the late Presiding Justice Jerry Garguilo, who died in September. Liccione, now a Suffolk County Supreme Court justice, will take Driscoll’s spot. The appellate court presides over appeals in cases from city and justice courts in Long Island and the Hudson Valley, and in Long Island’s district courts.

Driscoll has served as a Nassau County Supreme Court justice since 2008, presiding in the Commercial Division since 2009. Since 2019, Liccione has sat on  the New York Court of Claims since 2019, where she hears lawsuits against agencies of New York State and local governments and other policy matters.

Driscoll came to the bench from a career in local government and as a prosecutor. He served as deputy county executive on law enforcement and public safety in Nassau County from July 2004 to December 2007. Prior to that he served as a law clerk to Judge Joseph M. McLaughlin of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, and worked as an assistant U.S. attorney in Suffolk County and an assistant district attorney in Nassau County.

In a statement issued by the court system, Driscoll said he hopes to honor the “tradition of service embodied both by my dear friend and mentor Judge Jerry Garguilo.”

Zayas also paid his respects to Garguilo in the statement, calling him “a legal giant whose passing is a tremendous loss to the Appellate Term, our entire court family, and the greater community.”

Liccione’s career has spanned corporate law, the New York City Law Department and private practice before she began working for the judiciary as a law clerk for Suffolk County Acting Supreme Court Justice Martha Luft in 2017.

The appointments took effect immediately.