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As Monroe County voters head to the polls next Tuesday, they will face a single choice for district attorney: Brian Green. Though he is running unopposed, the Democrat still thinks engagement with the electorate is important and wants to present his case for their vote.
“I might be new to this role, having only been in it for a little more than a year, but I’m not new to the office, to prosecution, to county government, or government in general,” says Green. “I handled 26 homicide investigations. I went on to be a prosecutor for the state, to work in county government, and then to be a judge as well. So, I think all of that experience lends itself well to coming back to this role.”
Gov. Kathy Hochul appointed Green to replace longtime district attorney Sandra Doorley in September 2025. Doorley handed in her resignation earlier in the year following a highly publicized traffic-stop-related controversy. While this is his first time running for the position, Green previously worked in the office and also brings experience as an Irondequoit town justice.
Earlier this year, it appeared that Green would have a Republican challenger. The Monroe County Republican Committee introduced Frank Ciardi as its candidate for the office as part of its slate in April. However, the criminal defense attorney, who currently serves as a county legislator, turned it down, says GOP committee chairman Peter Elder.
“Petitions were filed to designate Frank Ciardi for district attorney. Mr. Ciardi then filed a declination to the designation,” Elder says.
Ciardi did not respond to a request for comment for this story.
Not a straight path
Green readily admits he started his path toward working in the legal system as far away as possible. As a college-aged adult, his biggest interest was pursuing a soccer career, until an injury derailed that dream.
Green rattles off a host of different professions he’s held since then: cook, barista, bike shop manager, and electrician. At one point, he worked in England doing corporate sales for Gillette.
“I think that’s really sort of given me this broader perspective than if I had just gone straight through undergrad and law school, got a job at a DA’s office and worked my way up the ladder, and that’s all I ever knew,” Green reflects. “I really do credit my (work history) with sort of making me who I am today and giving me the outlook that I have.”
He went back to school after returning to the U.S. in the 1990s, first at Monroe Community College and then at SUNY Brockport. However, Green’s original goal of pursuing a master’s degree in public policy focused on natural resource management was interrupted after he took a summer job working for a federal judge and found he enjoyed the work. He earned his law degree at Capital University Law School in Columbus, Ohio.
After a stint at the Ohio secretary of state’s office as an elections counsel, Green returned to Rochester and served as an assistant district attorney in the Monroe County district attorney’s office for several years, including as deputy chief of the Major Felony Bureau.
Green left the DA’s office in 2023 to run for an Irondequoit town justice position. He won with 52% of the vote over Patrick Russi, a three-time incumbent who had run on Republican, Democratic, Conservative, and Independence party lines in previous races.
Two years later, he returned to the district attorney’s office, this time taking over the leadership role after a brief interim period when the office was led by First Assistant District Attorney Perry Duckles. Green’s experience in the office and his role in developing the Juvenile Enhanced Diversion Stabilization program were highlighted as key factors in his appointment.
“Over the last several years, Monroe County has seen tremendous progress in reducing crime and improving safety, and it is absolutely necessary that we have someone in this role that will continue these efforts during this crucial time,” Hochul said in a statement at the time.
JEDS was instituted in 2023 to combat the spike in motor vehicle thefts. Young offenders, sometimes referred to as “Kiaboyz” on social media, were particularly highlighted in this category of crime. The program aimed to reduce times of inactivity in juvenile cases by connecting them with probation services earlier in the process and accelerating court proceedings in an attempt to disrupt negative interactions with their peers.
“There are usually two, three, four people in a car. And what we ended up seeing is the people who were sort of just along for the ride stopped coming back. It was a noticeable difference,” Green observes of the JEDS program. “For the most part, with people who were at a decision point in their lives, we saw a clear divide grow between the people who recidivated and the people who took advantage of the program and didn’t come back.”
Doorley’s departure from the district attorney’s office began with a speeding incident near her Webster home in April 2024. Body-camera footage captured her arguing with the officer during the ticketing process, implying her position gave her special treatment. Doorley pleaded guilty to the speeding charge and apologized publicly in the months that followed, but still faced multiple investigations by local and state agencies.
Before that incident, Doorley had been DA for close to 13 years, decisively winning the position in a 2011 election on the Democratic line. She switched to the Republican Party in 2015, with little impact on her continued electoral success; Doorley won three reelection bids with at least 54% of the vote each time.
In June 2025, the state Commission on Prosecutorial Conduct recommended that she be publicly censured. Doorley submitted her resignation two months later, stating during her commission deposition that she wanted to “ride off into the sunset.”
Building community
Green is aware that the controversy at the end of Doorley’s tenure negatively affected the community’s perception of the district attorney’s office.
“I’m not going to dwell too much on what happened with district attorney Doorley. All I’ll say is that the glimpse that the public got to see was a part of the reason that the office had become a very difficult place to work,” he says.
“But that (work environment) also disrupted the relationship that the office had with the community. We used to be a much bigger and active part of the community. We used to engage in all kinds of programs. And those all fell by the wayside over the last four or five years. So, restoring the trust in the community is a huge part of my rebuilding process.”
He stresses that trust is a key part of the district attorney’s office work. Without community cooperation, Green says, prosecution cases can struggle. Victims or witnesses of violent crimes who could help might not come forward if trust is not achieved, for example.
“There still is this ‘no snitch’ culture in the community, especially in the community we serve the most, in the city. Part of that is, depending on who you’re talking about, a fear of retribution or a general fear of being seen as an ally to the police and law enforcement,” Green observes. “And that’s got to change. So, the more I can be in the community and talk to the community and build that trust, hopefully the more the community will rally around victims and witnesses and encourage them to be a part of the process so that we can hold people accountable.”
Some of these opportunities include an annual golf tournament and fundraiser for the Boys and Girls Club of Rochester previously conducted by the DA’s office, which he would like to see return. Green also believes that once the office fills its newly created community relations liaison position in the coming year, it will be able to add even more to these efforts.
Two outreach programs which the DA’s office has already participated in under Green are Project Tips and Roc the Peace. He has also been a regular feature on the parade circuit this year, attending the St. Patrick’s Day, Pride, and Labor Day parades, as well as speaking at schools and events held by anti-violence organizations.
“I’m trying not to say no to those events because I think it’s important to be out there telling the community what we’re doing and how I’m making the office better and making the community safer. Letting them know, not only will we still be tough on crime, but we’re also going to be fair and ethical about the way we do it,” says Green. “I desperately want to rebuild that trust with the community and let them know that they’re in good hands.”
Public-facing information is another part of building community trust, and Green highlights the DA’s ongoing partnership with criminal justice transparency nonprofit Measures For Justice.
The organization’s Commons datapage, launched in 2023, has a section dedicated to Monroe County’s district attorney’s office. It displays information such as the number of cases the department receives, offense type and severity, decisions reached after case review, sentencing categories, how quickly cases move through the system, and breakdowns by racial category.
MFJ’s partnership with the DA’s office also includes a policy goal of increasing diversions. This refers to cases in which non-violent, low-level defendants are offered a chance to achieve a more favorable outcome and avoid a criminal conviction, typically by completing a court-mandated program.
While the policy goal was to increase diversions to 10% by December 2024, cases have fallen far short, never exceeding 1.7%. However, Green says that data transfer and scrubbing is complex and the current technology at the office is not up-to-date. This has resulted in months-long timelines for providing that information to MFJ, which itself is incomplete.
“Our issue is, our internal system does not accurately capture our diversions,” says Calli Marianetti, director of community relations at the DA’s office. “It’s not that we haven’t met that goal. We might have, we may have not.”
“We have these digital systems, but we don’t leverage them the way we need to leverage them,” Green says. “Our data entry team is understaffed. But if we can have change and update cases very quickly from court, that’s going to take a huge load off our data entry, who can then catch up on the backlog of cases that they have to close.”
He believes both adding staff to the data entry team and modernizing the case management system will have a cascading effect on efficiency, output, and overall work balance. Efficiency matters especially because caseloads are high and staffing numbers are stacked against prosecutors. Green says the DA’s office currently has 97 budgeted attorney spots compared to 218 defense attorneys from multiple sources.
Changing culture
High caseloads combined with a negative workplace culture has resulted in high amounts of turnover, with as many as a third of attorneys and other support staff leaving on a yearly basis. Green brings up his departure as an example. He was the 27th attorney to leave that year—at a time when the number of attorneys in the office totaled 86.
“The office had become a really difficult place to work over the prior decade or so,” he says. “We saw incredible turnover, not just in attorneys, but in staff. I knew that there needed to be a change, not just in leadership and practice, but in leadership style and in the sort of day-to-day operation of the office. That was my number one priority.
“There’s been a big change. We have a long way to go, but there’s definitely been a big change,” he adds. “We still have people who leave the office, but generally they are only leaving now for incredible opportunities that come their way because of their reputation, which is different than the way it used to be.”
Part of changing the culture has been to institute more effective education and training programs. While Green says there were small-scale attempts in the past, he has applied his efforts consistently officewide.
For example, a two-week program that Green describes as a combination of academic, practical and shadowing experience connects newer staff with more experienced staff. The office also offers a more focused, comprehensive training program for felony assistance, since those cases differ significantly from misdemeanors.
“Not only are these brand new attorneys getting this foundation, but they’re also making connections throughout the office with the most senior people in the office,” says Green. “They’re no longer scared to go to the people with the most experience to ask questions or to learn, to seek advice.”
Green also wants to focus on recruitment, which has never been a priority for the office. However, as the number of applicants has started to decline, the need to replenish those pools has grown. They have already been making connections with law schools from Ohio to New England, Green says.
He adds that the department has formalized its internship program, creating a curriculum for them to focus on. His ultimate plan is to create a recruitment class by starting with a large group of first-year law students. From that pool, they will then bring back a handful for a second-year paid position where the office can offer even more opportunities, such as a practice order that would allow them to appear in court under the supervision of a licensed attorney.
“It makes sense to have things like training programs and recruitment programs be formalized because you want people to know what’s expected of them. You want them to understand what they have to do on a daily basis. You want them to have some sort of structure so that they’re not sitting around waiting for something to happen,” Green says. “People feel better and happier when they have that kind of structure and guidance.
“One of the hardest parts of becoming an assistant district attorney is learning how to manage your own caseload, learning how to prioritize and learning how to keep all the balls in the air,” he notes. “It’s a very demanding job. It’s a very hard skill to learn and you don’t learn it in law school. And so if we don’t teach it here, then we see people flounder.”
Green campaign finances
This election cycle, disclosure reports show that Green listed $10,650 total in fundraising, with individual donations as the single largest contributor type ($5,500).
Many of those donations came from local attorneys, political figures, or business leaders. Some prominent names are: Gail Morelle, the sister of Rep. Joe Morelle and vice president at Christa Construction; Yversha Roman, the Monroe County legislature president; Sanjay Hiranandani, CEO of Bluesprout and Monroe County Airport Authority board member; Andrew Gallina, Gallina Development Corp. president; and Naomi Silver, president and CEO of the Rochester Red Wings.
Groups that contributed to Green include Monroe County Sheriff Todd Baxter’s political committee, the North Atlantic States Regional Council of Carpenters, and the Indus Group, a hospitality organization.
Two organizations who endorsed Green also gave money to his campaign. Those were Patriot PAC NY, a political action committee started by Rep. Pat Ryan to “(build) the vanguard of Patriots who will defeat MAGA,” and New Democrats of NY, a group focused on “overlooked and underfunded” local races.
The campaign also listed $2,382 in outstanding loans coming from the candidate himself.
Green spent $29,813 on this election, with most of it going to catering and event costs.
Jacob Schermerhorn is a Rochester Beacon contributing writer and data journalist.
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