Gregory Diskant is a senior litigator at Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler, LLP, where he served as chair of the firm from 1997-2007. Prior to joining Patterson Belknap Mr. Diskant served as Assistant United States Attorney and as Chief Appellate Attorney for the Southern District of New York. He also served as a Law Clerk to the Hon. Thurgood Marshall, Supreme Court of the United States and the Hon. J. Skelly Wright, U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
After an active commercial trial practice of over 40 years, Mr. Diskant now focuses on pro bono work. In 2024, he co-authored a 130-page report for the NYC Bar Association proposing that Congress pass a mandatory and enforceable ethics code for the Supreme Court. Much of Mr. Diskant’s pro bono practice centers on democracy issues. He was counsel of record in Rucho v. Common Cause, the Supreme Court gerrymandering case, and is now involved in multiple litigations challenging recent Executive Orders by the Trump administration, including the attempt to eliminate birthright citizenship as guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment and the purported invocation of the Alien Enemies Act to summarily deport undocumented immigrants as supposed enemies of the state. Mr. Diskant works with different democracy groups, including Common Cause (on whose board he sits), the Brennan Center, Public Citizen and the ACLU. He also has an active First Amendment practice and recently obtained a landmark ruling that discipline of prosecutors by New York’s Grievance Committee should be presumptively public.