Russo was a member of the Oakland City Council from 1994–2000, where he served as finance committee chair and became a leading advocate for fiscal accountability and government reform.

His father, a construction worker and union vice president, and his mother, a dressmaker, moved to the United States from London in 1958 five months before he was born.

He served as president of Friends of Oakland Parks and Recreation, treasurer of the East Bay League of Conservation Voters, and pro bono attorney to several neighborhood associations and non-profits.

[11] In his six years on the council, John implemented community policing, developed the first balanced budget in a generation, and working closely with the League of Woman Voters, authored Oakland's open government law called the "sunshine" ordinance.

The Law Corps also led Oakland's crackdown on liquor stores considered a blight on the community because they were providing a haven for drug dealing and other nuisances.

Despite the settlement's hefty price tag, Russo said the cases could have cost the city tens of millions of dollars more had they gone to trial, pointing out that the victims had spent more than 25 years, combined, imprisoned on false charges.

The payout went to 119 plaintiffs who filed federal civil rights lawsuits claiming four police officers kidnapped, beat and planted drugs on them during the summer of 2000.

The plaintiffs were invited to post different fliers without discriminatory language, but instead they elected to sue the city over violation of their free speech rights.

[18] The case received national attention when Washington Post columnist George Will denounced the city of Oakland for infringing on the plaintiffs' free speech rights.

[19] In his response to Will, printed in the San Francisco Chronicle, Russo reminded readers that the plaintiffs were deliberately attempting to exclude their LGBT co-workers.

[21] In a San Francisco Chronicle interview, Russo acknowledged that he wasn't wearing his seat belt when he was pulled over by officers at about 5:30 p.m. on Piedmont Avenue in Oakland.

He said he had been distracted as he left the popular Fentons Creamery with his twin 8-year-old sons in the back seat of his 2004 Honda Civic hybrid.

[14] In August 2005, John Russo was voted a Northern California Super Lawyer by his peers and the independent research of the Law & Politics Magazine.

In addition, the California Minority Counsel Program (CMCP) awarded the Office of the City Attorney the John Essex and Guy Rounsaville In-House Diversity Counsel Award for demonstrating superior commitment to diversity; it was the first time a public agency had received the honor in the thirteen-year history of the program.

Despite this payout, he managed to reduce city spending on lawyers and lawsuits by $3.5 million compared with the previous fiscal year.

On the local level, Russo's innovative, privately funded Neighborhood Law Corps helped overcome blight by, among other things, entering an agreement with Union Pacific Railroad to clean up illegally dumped trash along railroad tracks, which will save the city hundreds of thousands of dollars in cleanup costs over the ten-year period of the agreement.