Christopher Ryan

Deputy Commissioner of Strategic Initiatives

Christopher Ryan is a 20-year veteran of the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, where he served as an Assistant District Attorney, a Deputy Chief of the Firearms Trafficking Unit, and then, for eight years, as the Chief of the Violent Criminal Enterprises Unit. In that role he supervised a team of prosecutors, investigative analysts and detectives responsible for dismantling sophisticated criminal enterprises engaged in offenses including homicide, interstate firearms trafficking, tax crimes, money laundering and major narcotics. While at the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, he spent two years as a special advisor to the Cook County State Attorney’s Office in Chicago, consulting with that office on its anti-gang violence capabilities and developing enforcement strategies to combat firearms-related homicides.

Starting in 2018, Mr. Ryan served as Managing Director in the Strategic Risk & Security practice at K2 Integrity, an international management and security consulting firm, where he supervised physical security and executive protection operations, served as an integrity monitor and conducted complex internal investigations in the United States, Europe and the Middle East into civil and criminal misconduct, including bribery, corruption, fraud, waste and abuse.

In 2020, Mr. Ryan was appointed Special Counsel to the New York Attorney General (NYAG) to conduct a comprehensive five-month audit of the Office of the New York Attorney General’s Special Investigations and Prosecutions Unit, which investigates and prosecutes police-involved fatalities and led the NYAG’s reorganization and expansion of that unit, including through recommending specific structural and policy reforms to the Attorney General and executive staff.

Mr. Ryan received his B.A. in political science from Union College and his J.D. from the Unviersity of Virginia School of Law.