[3] From 1994 to 1996, Engelmayer served as an Assistant to the United States Solicitor General Drew S. Days III in Washington D.C.[1] In that role, he argued four cases before the U.S. Supreme Court.
[1] He led the prosecution of Lawrence X. Cusack III, who created and sold $7 million worth of forged documents claiming that President John F. Kennedy paid hush money to conceal a supposed affair with Marilyn Monroe.
[5] Engelmayer also received the U.S. Attorney's Director's Award for Superior Performance in 1998 in connection with his prosecution of William F. Duker, a New York City lawyer who defrauded the FDIC and the Resolution Trust Corporation of $1.4 million in overbillings.
[9] In a 2001 Wall Street Journal op-ed, he discussed the challenges prosecutors investigating President Bill Clinton's pardons of Marc Rich and others faced.
[11] On February 2, 2011, President Barack Obama nominated Engelmayer to fill the judicial seat vacated by Judge Gerard E. Lynch, who was elevated to the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.
[2] In 2012, in American Freedom Defense Initiative v. Metropolitan Transit Authority,[18] Engelmayer held that the MTA violated the First Amendment in refusing to allow a pro-Israel advertisement to appear on New York City subways and buses.
[21] In 2012, in Starr Int’l Co. vs. Federal Reserve Bank of N.Y.,[22] Engelmayer dismissed multi-billion-dollar damages claims brought against the Federal Reserve Bank of New York by a major stockholder in American International Group, Inc.[23] The state-law claims, for breach of fiduciary duty, arose from FRBNY's exercise of emergency rescue powers during the 2008-2009 financial crisis.
[26] In 2013 and 2014, in Hart v. Rick's Cabaret, Intern., Inc., Engelmayer issued pretrial decisions holding a Manhattan strip club liable to a class of more than 1,900 exotic dancers for minimum wage, overtime, and other labor law violations.
[36] In approving the class settlement and fee award, Engelmayer equated its terms to the landmark antitrust consent decrees that for decades had bound ASCAP and BMI, the nation's two largest music licensing organizations.
[40] Between 2016 and 2019, Engelmayer issued a series of decisions[41] reviewing and approving aspects of the process of valuing and validating customer claims against the bankruptcy estate of Bernard L. Madoff's company.
[42] Between 2016 and 2019, Engelmayer presided over litigation over claims on behalf of severely disabled adults of years of physical abuse and deficient care at the Union Avenue IRA, a state-run group home staff called the "Bronx Zoo".
[44] In 2019, Engelmayer granted summary judgment for the defense, ending a nationwide products liability Multidistrict Litigation spanning claims by 920 plaintiffs.
[45][46] The plaintiffs claimed that the synthetic hormone secreted by Mirena, an intrauterine contraceptive product made and marketed by Bayer AG and affiliates, caused users to suffer idiopathic intracranial hypertension (IIH), a condition involving buildup of cerebrospinal fluid around the brain.
He had earlier excluded plaintiffs' seven proposed general causation experts because their testimony did not satisfy Daubert v. Merrill Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc. and Federal Rule of Evidence 702.
He added: "An attempt by a municipality in an era before electronic data storage to compel an entire industry monthly to copy and produce its records as to all local customers would have been unthinkable under the Fourth Amendment."
Departments of State and Defense each to process at least 5,000 pages per month of materials relating to the killing of Saudi journalist and U.S. resident Jamal Khashoggi.
The agency had no authority to impose major portions of the rule, he held, and its stated justification for the new rule-making "in the first place—a purported 'significant increase' in civilian complaints relating to the conscience provisions—was factually untrue."
[69] In 2022, addressing a question of first impression, Engelmayer denied a facial challenge under the First Amendment to the Securities and Exchange Commission's Regulation Fair Disclosure (Reg FD).
[78] In 2024, in a closely watched case, Engelmayer dismissed most claims the SEC brought against SolarWinds Corp., a cybersecurity company, and its chief information security officer, Timothy Brown.
The SEC, he held, adequately pled that SolarWinds and Brown, in that statement, had falsely and misleadingly touted the company's cybersecurity, including its password and access controls, as strong.
The Government also moved to transfer a juvenile (17-year-old) gang member for prosecution as an adult, but after a one-week evidentiary hearing, Engelmayer denied the motion.
[91] In 2019, Engelmayer sentenced Sajmir Alihmehmeti, who was charged with[92] and shortly before trial pleaded guilty to attempting to provide material support to the terrorist group ISIS, to 22 years in prison.
In 2023, Engelmayer sentenced Bashir Kulmiye, a Somali guard who had pleaded guilty to participating in holding kidnapped American journalist Michael Scott Moore, to 150 months in prison.
[98] In 2014, Engelmayer sentenced Nelson Castro, a Bronx assemblyman who was a longtime secret government informant, making recordings of colleagues while twice winning reelection.
[101] In 2016, Engelmayer sentenced Alonzo Knowles, a Bahamian man who had hacked celebrities' email and attempted to sell unreleased movie and television scripts and personal images and videos, to 60 months in prison.
[102] In 2016, Engelmayer presided over the trial of "Banana King" Thomas Hoey on charges that he had embezzled nearly $800,000 from his banana-distribution company's employees' retirement fund.
[108] In 2022, Engelmayer presided over the trial of Stefan Gillier, a Belgian national who had been extradited to the U.S., on wire fraud conspiracy charges based on a scheme to obtain over $6 million in aircraft parts.