Cryan was born on September 1, 1961, in
East Orange and raised
Roman Catholic. Cryan's father had been charged in Federal court with racketeering and corruption, though the judge in the case dismissed the charges due to prosecutorial mistakes and ended the proceedings against him. The lawmaker's son, also named John Cryan, was convicted of brutally beating a motorist with a baseball bat while two accomplices punched and kicked the victim, after a case of road rage that occurred when his father was in the General Assembly. The younger Cryan was ordered by the court only to probation but he was later jailed for violating the terms of his sentence. Other relatives involved in public life are his cousin,
Morristown Councilman John Cryan, his sister,
Union Township Municipal Clerk Eileen Birch, his cousin,
Cranford, New Jersey township administrator Jamie Cryan, his brother-in-law
Superior Court judge Joseph Donohue. The New York Post reported that Cryan "graphically spelled out his kinky proclivities in more than 150 e-mails that he sent to" a former lobbyist for Prudential Financial who pleaded guilty to stalking his girlfriend in exchange for being allowed to participate in a pre-trial intervention program. "The e-mails were written when the pol presumably would have been at one of his government jobs — either his $49,000-a-year Assembly gig or his $111,000-a-year post as Union County undersheriff," the Post said. Cryan graduated with a
B.A. from
Belmont Abbey College in Business Administration in 1983. Cryan was born in
East Orange, and currently resides in
Union Township. == Democratic state chairman ==