John Farmer Jr.

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John Farmer, Jr.
Acting Governor of New Jersey
In office January 8, 2002 – January 8, 2002
Preceded by	Donald DiFrancesco
Succeeded by	John O. Bennett (acting)
New Jersey Attorney General
In office 1999 – 2002
Preceded by	Peter Verniero
Succeeded by	David Samson
Born	1957
Political party	Republican

John J. Farmer, Jr. (born June 24, 1957) is a politician, who served as Acting Governor of New Jersey for 90 minutes on January 8, 2002 by virtue of his status as New Jersey Attorney General.

Farmer was born in Jersey City, New Jersey in 1957. He attended Georgetown University receiving a B.A. degree in 1979 and a J.D. degree in 1986. After law school he worked as a clerk for New Jersey Supreme Court Justice Alan B. Handler. From 1988 to 1990, he was an associate in the law firm of Riker, Danzig, Scherer, Hyland & Perretti in Morristown. He served from 1990 to 1994 as an Assistant U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey. In 1997, Governor Christie Todd Whitman appointed Farmer as Chief Counsel, after having served as Deputy Chief Counsel and Assistant Counsel to the Governor.^[1]

Farmer was nominated to be New Jersey Attorney General on March 15, 1999 and was sworn in the following June after being confirmed unanimously by the New Jersey Senate. He continued to serve under Donald DiFrancesco after Whitman's resignation.

At the end of DiFrancesco's tenure as Governor of New Jersey, the state did not have the position of lieutenant governor, and succession rules specified that the next in line for governor would be the Senate President. With DiFrancesco's retirement from the New Jersey Senate, the position of Senate President was vacant, leaving the Attorney General next in line for the seat while the new Senate President, John O. Bennett was sworn in.

Farmer subsequently served as Senior Counsel to the 9/11 Commission (officially known as the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States) chaired by former New Jersey Governor Thomas Kean and former Indiana Congressman Lee H. Hamilton.

Currently, Farmer is practicing law in New Jersey as a partner in a North Jersey firm. He also teaches law as an adjunct professor at Rutgers School of Law-Newark, and is a regular contributing writer to The Star-Ledger (of Newark) and other publications.

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