Joseph Fusco

Mr. Fusco served for twenty-three years as regulatory counsel to Trump Entertainment Resorts, Inc., including eight as outside counsel and fifteen as its Executive Vice-President, Government Affairs. His responsibilities included licensing, investigation, legislation and development matters for this owner-operator of three Atlantic City casino resorts and providing counsel for Casino Association of New Jersey matters, the industry trade group.
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Mr. Fusco also was an equity partner in an Atlantic City law firm specializing in casino, regulatory, commercial and administrative law matters.
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Mr. Fusco was appointed by former New Jersey Governor Brendan Byrne (D) to the position of Atlantic County Prosecutor, the chief law enforcement officer for Atlantic County and its approximately 900 law enforcement officers. As Prosecutor, he restructured the 113 member staff to include 26 Assistant Prosecutors and implemented a computerized tracking system to manage its rapidly growing annual workload of 5,000 cases. He had previously served (1970-1977) as an Assistant Prosecutor to Essex County Prosecutor Joseph Lordi in New Jersey’s largest Prosecutor’s Office. His first two years there focused on appellate litigation including briefing and arguing four appeals to the New Jersey Supreme Court and more than fifty in the Appellate Division. During the next five years, he supervised approximately 650 criminal investigations as Attorney-in-Charge of its Fraud and Special Investigations Section and sixteen member staff.
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Mr. Fusco was hired by the Commission and Chairman Lordi as one of the newly created Commission’s first two employees in the position of Special Counsel-Director of its License Division. This was a start-up experience. The first casino opened to the public in May 1978. By the time he left to become the Atlantic County Prosecutor, Mr. Fusco and his 98 member staff had assisted the Commission in licensing six casinos, 36,000 casino employees and 250 service industry vendors and establishing the regulatory procedures to do so.