James Block Zagel was an American judge and attorney.
21 Facts About James Zagel
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James Zagel presided over numerous high-profile trials, including those of several members of the Chicago Outfit and the corruption trial of former Governor of Illinois Rod Blagojevich.
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James Zagel was born to Jewish parents in Chicago on March 4,1941.
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James Zagel was the son of Samuel S Zagel, a native of Warsaw, Poland who had immigrated to Chicago in 1915, and Ethel Samuels Zagel.
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James Zagel earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Chicago in 1962 and a Master of Arts degree from the University of Chicago in the same year.
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James Zagel then earned a Juris Doctor from Harvard Law School in 1965.
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James Zagel began his career as an assistant state's attorney in Cook County, Illinois, from 1965 until 1969, where he helped compile the case against mass murderer Richard Speck.
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James Zagel then served as an assistant attorney general for the State of Illinois from 1969 until 1977.
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Concurrent to the job as assistant attorney general, James Zagel ran the Criminal Justice Division in the attorney general's office from 1970 until 1977, and he served as chief prosecuting attorney for the Illinois Judicial Inquiry Board from 1973 until 1975.
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In 1977, James Zagel became executive director of the Illinois Law Enforcement Commission, a post he held until 1979.
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From 1979 until 1980, James Zagel was the director of the Illinois Department of Revenue.
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From 1980 until joining the federal bench in 1987, James Zagel was the director of the Illinois State Police.
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James Zagel was a finalist for a federal judgeship in 1985, but was not chosen.
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On February 2,1987, President Reagan nominated James Zagel to be a judge on the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois.
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From 2008 to 2015, James Zagel served a seven-year term on the FISA Court.
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James Zagel presided over many notable and high-profile trials, including the Jesse Webster case and the "Family Secrets" trial that ended in 2007, where he convicted numerous mobsters, such as Joseph Lombardo and Frank Calabrese Sr.
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James Zagel was retried in June 2011, with Zagel presiding, and the jury returned a guilty verdict on 17 of the remaining counts, including those pertaining to the Obama Senate seat.
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On December 7,2011, James Zagel sentenced Rod Blagojevich to 14 years in federal prison, though the sentence was commuted by President Donald Trump in 2020.
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James Zagel acted in two films, playing a Chicago judge in the 1989 film Music Box, and a physician whose parent is murdered in the 1991 film Homicide.
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James Zagel then was married to lawyer Margaret Maxwell Zagel from around 1979 until his death.
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James Zagel died from heart failure at his home in Chicago on July 15,2023, at the age of 82.