Gary T. Kelder

Professor of Law (315) 443-1179 gtkelder@syr.edu Curriculum Vitae [PDF]

Gary T. Kelder is a tenured Professor at the Syracuse University College of Law, where he has taught since 1975. He received his law degree, cum laude, from Boston University School of Law in 1971. As the recipient of a Criminal Law Education and Research Fellowship, he obtained an LL.M in Criminal Justice at New York University Graduate School of Law in 1972.

Professor Kelder began his career in law teaching at Cleveland State University, Cleveland-Marshall College of Law, where he taught from 1972 to 1975. Courses he has taught over his 45 year teaching career include: Criminal Law, Criminal Procedure, Evidence, Federal Indian Law, Federal Courts, and Conflict of Laws. He taught Conflict of Laws as a Visiting Professor at Cornell Law School in Spring 2000. During the summers of 1978, 1979, 1981 and 1989, he taught in the Scholarship Program in Law for American Indians operated by the American Indian Law Center, Inc., at the University of New Mexico School of Law. Between 1985 and 2000, he spent eight summers in England co-directing the College of Law’s Law in London Externship Program.

Throughout his career teaching law, Professor Kelder has been simultaneously engaged in the practice of both criminal and civil law at the trial and appellate levels. His bar admissions include the states of New York and Massachusetts, the United States Courts of Appeals for the Second and Sixth Circuits, and the United States District Courts for the Northern District of New York and the Northern District of Ohio.

In June of 1978, Professor Kelder was the recipient of the Civil Libertarian of the Year Award presented by the Greater Cleveland (Ohio) Chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union in recognition of his successful efforts in a significant federal habeas corpus action on behalf of a victim of former FBI Director Hoover’s targeting of African American dissidents. From 1982 to 1990, he was co-counsel for the Oneida of the Thames Band (Canada) in the Oneida Nation’s land claim litigation in the New York federal courts. From 1992 to October 1997, he served as a Chief Assistant District Attorney with the Onondaga County District Attorney’s Office. From 1998 to 2000, and again from 2011 to 2016, Professor Kelder worked on complex civil litigation as of counsel to the Syracuse law firm of Gilberti, Stinziano, Heintz & Smith, PC. From 2001 to 2008, he was involved in criminal defense litigation as a solo practitioner and of counsel to the law firm of Cambareri, Cambareri & Koldin, LLP.

Professor Kelder has also authored several articles on criminal procedure for the Syracuse Law Review Survey of New York Law. For three decades, he has provided update outlines and presentations on New York search and seizure law and other topics at Summer Judicial Seminars and Court Attorney Programs sponsored by the New York Office of Court Administration, the New York State Judicial Institute and, more recently, by the New York 5^th, 6^th, and 7^th Judicial Districts. He has provided similar outlines and presentations for programs sponsored by local bar associations and the New York State Magistrate’s Association. In 1998, Judith S. Kaye, then Chief Judge of the New York Court of Appeals, appointed Professor Kelder as a committee member of the Grand Jury Project which issued its final report regarding recommended improvements in the operation of New York Grand Juries in March 1999.