Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg will face off against Patrick Timmins in the June 24 Democratic primary in an effort to retain his role as the borough’s top prosecutor.

Bragg is the 37th district attorney of Manhattan and, in 2021, became the first black man elected to the position. If he wins the primary, he will go on to face Republican candidate Maud Maron in the general election on Nov. 4.

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Here’s everything you need to know about Bragg:

Bragg was born on October 21, 1973 and grew up in Harlem, New York. He received a bachelor’s degree in government from Harvard University and a law degree from Harvard Law School, according to his campaign website. After law school, he clerked for Hon. Robert P. Patterson, Jr. in New York’s Southern district.

Bragg met his wife, Jamila, when they were both attending Harvard. He was working toward his law degree while she was working toward a master’s degree in education, and the couple have been married since 2003, according to the New York Times. They share two children, according to Patch.

Bragg is a Sunday school teacher at and a longtime member of Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem, founded in 1808 and described as one of the oldest African-American churches in the country.

Occupations and experience

After graduating from law school, Bragg worked his way up to becoming the assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York in 2009. In 2017, he was appointed as the New York state chief deputy attorney general, a position he held until 2018.

Bragg then served as a visiting professor at New York Law School, where he also served as co-director of the Racial Justice Project. He launched his campaign for New York County district attorney in 2019 and won the 2021 election, taking office in January 2022.

His term will be ending soon in January 2026, unless the incumbent can pull off another win at the Democratic primary taking place on June 24, according to Ballotpedia.

Work and contributions

One of Bragg’s first acts in office as Manhattan DA was creating the Post-Conviction Justice Unit, which reinvestigates cases with convictions to see if those sentences should be modified, according to its website. He’s also responsible for creating the Manhattan DA Office’s first Special Victims Division, which handles sensitive cases involving sexual violence, child abuse, and more.

Additionally, he established Pathways to Public Safety, which aims to divert people struggling with mental illness away from incarceration, instead providing them with the mental health resources they need, according to his bio on the Manhattan DA Office’s website.

Bragg is also known for his prosecution of President Donald Trump, who was convicted in May 2024 on 34 counts of falsifying business records to conceal hush money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels ahead of the 2016 presidential election.

But the ruling, and Bragg’s role in it, has garnered sharp criticism. A July 2024 report from the House Judiciary Committee’s Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government said, “President Trump never had a real shot at a fair trial in Manhattan.”

“In a more neutral jurisdiction, where a politically ambitious prosecutor was not motivated by partisanship and a trial judge with perceived biases did not refuse to enforce a fair proceeding, President Trump would have never been found guilty,” the report reads.

Major policy positions

After experiencing unconstitutional stops by law enforcement and other run-ins with those not in law enforcement during his youth, Bragg was motivated to pursue a law degree so he could help ensure public safety for all, he told American Prospect in a 2021 interview.

“Those experiences really are why I went to law school and framed my professional experience working at the intersection of public safety and fairness,” he told the outlet. “…You can’t really fully have public safety without trust that comes with the fairness, and that the first civil right is the right to be safe.”

In that same interview, he said he believed most misdemeanor crimes have little impact on public safety, adding that he wants to “shrink the system,” as well as address “racial disparities” and the “urgent gun crisis.”