Rudy Giuliani

Rudolph William Louis Giuliani was born on May 28, 1944, in the East Flatbush neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York. The only child of working-class Italian-American parents, he attended Catholic schools and originally considered the priesthood before turning to law. He earned his undergraduate degree from Manhattan College in 1965 and his J.D. from New York University School of Law in 1968.

Giuliani built his early reputation as a federal prosecutor. As United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York from 1983 to 1989, he led high-profile prosecutions of the Mafia Commission Trial, the Wall Street insider-trading cases against Ivan Boesky and Michael Milken, and corrupt city officials in the Parking Violations Bureau scandal. He pioneered the aggressive use of the RICO statute against organized crime.

Elected the 107th Mayor of New York City in 1993, he served two terms from 1994 through 2001. His administration championed the broken-windows policing approach associated with Commissioner William Bratton, oversaw sharp drops in reported crime, and pursued welfare reform. His response to the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center earned him Time magazine's Person of the Year designation that December.

After leaving office he founded the consulting firm Giuliani Partners, mounted an unsuccessful campaign for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination, and later served as personal attorney to President Donald Trump. His post-2020 election advocacy resulted in the suspension of his New York and District of Columbia law licenses and a 2023 defamation judgment in favor of Georgia election workers Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss.

Rudy is a masculine pet form of Rudolph, from the Old Germanic elements hrod meaning fame and wulf meaning wolf. He has carried the diminutive throughout his public life.