After law school, Garcia practiced
corporate law for a year at the
Wall Street law firm
Cahill Gordon & Reindel. He then served as a
law clerk for Judge
Judith Kaye of the
New York Court of Appeals from 1990 to 1992. Within months of joining the Office, Garcia was assigned to the trial team prosecuting four defendants for perpetrating the
1993 World Trade Center bombing. In the ensuing trial, the four defendants were convicted on all counts. For his work on that case, Garcia received the Attorney General's Award for Exceptional Service, the highest reward presented by the
U.S. Department of Justice. Garcia said the case "would define my career in Government service." In 1995, Garcia went to
Manila in the
Philippines to direct the investigation and prosecution of the terrorist conspiracy led by
Ramzi Yousef and
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to
bomb 12 U.S. airliners flying from Asia to the United States. In 1996, Yousef and two other defendants were convicted of all counts. For his work on that case, Garcia received his second Attorney General's Award for Exceptional Service.
Acting Commissioner of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (2002–2003) Garcia served as Acting Commissioner of the U.S.
Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) from December 2002 to February 2003. On March 19, 2005, Garcia announced a record $11 million civil immigration settlement with
Walmart for its use of several hundred undocumented janitorial workers. Overlapping with this period, from 2003 to 2006, Garcia was also Vice President of the Americas for
Interpol, the international police organization. While vice president, he served on Interpol's executive committee, the body charged with overseeing the budget and strategic direction of the agency. According to
The Wall Street Journal, under his tenure his "office became well known for the successful prosecution of public-corruption and terrorism-related cases." In notable white-collar criminal cases, he "obtained guilty pleas in a fraud case against former executives of collapsed financial firm
Refco Inc., and successfully prosecuted both large-scale insider trading at Wall Street firms and cases of stock-option backdating." He also oversaw "a series of high-profile public corruption cases," including the
Eliot Spitzer prostitution scandal, where he declined to prosecute Spitzer for violating the
Mann Act, and the prosecution of several state politicians and city officials, such as former Police Commissioner
Bernard Kerik and Democratic political fundraiser
Norman Hsu. In the international domain, his office "successfully prosecuted corruption cases stemming from the United Nations
oil-for-food scandal." On April 13, 2013, Russia blacklisted Garcia from entering the country in retaliation for his role in the arrest and prosecution of Bout.
Partner at Kirkland & Ellis (2009–2016) In February 2009, Garcia joined the international law firm
Kirkland & Ellis as a partner in the New York office of the firm's Litigation Practice Group. He led the Government, Regulatory and Internal Investigations practice for the firm's New York office. At Kirkland & Ellis, he was engaged in matters involving insider trading, export controls, the
Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, offshore tax shelters, and theft of trade secrets.
Chairman of the investigatory chamber of the Ethics Committee of FIFA (2012–2014) On July 17, 2012, in the wake of announced anti-corruption reforms by
Sepp Blatter, the president of the world
association football governing body FIFA, the organization appointed U.S. lawyer Garcia as the chairman of the investigative chamber of
FIFA Ethics Committee, while German judge
Hans-Joachim Eckert was appointed as the chairman of the Ethics Committee's
adjudication chamber. In August 2012, Garcia declared his intention to investigate the bidding process and decision to respectively award the right to host the 2018 and 2022
FIFA World Cup to
Russia and
Qatar by the
FIFA Executive Committee. Garcia delivered his subsequent 350-page report in September 2014, and Eckert then announced that it would not be made public for legal reasons. On November 13, 2014, Eckert released a 42-page summary of his findings after reviewing Garcia's report. The summary cleared both Russia and Qatar of any wrongdoing during the bidding for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups, leaving Russia and Qatar free to stage their respective World Cups. FIFA welcomed "the fact that a degree of closure has been reached," while the
Associated Press wrote that the Eckert summary "was denounced by critics as a
whitewash." A day later, Garcia resigned from his role as FIFA ethics investigator in protest of FIFA's conduct, citing a "lack of leadership" and lost confidence in the independence of Eckert from FIFA. In June 2015, Swiss authorities claimed the report was of "little value".
Court of Appeals (2016–present) Garcia was appointed as associate judge of the
New York Court of Appeals by Governor
Andrew Cuomo on January 20, 2016. He was confirmed by the
New York State Senate and took the oath of office on February 8, 2016. In 2017,
Adam Goldman of
The New York Times reported Garcia was viewed favorably by some FBI agents as he was considered to replace
James Comey. ==Community service==