Jeffrey Alker Meyer

Jeffrey Alker Meyer was born in North Tarrytown (now Sleepy Hollow) New York on April 13, 1963. He loved games of all kinds, especially baseball, basketball, and tennis, and grew up roaming the woods, courts, and fields of Chappaqua, NY with his brothers Dan and Tory and his sister Lisa. He had a prodigious memory for Yankees statistics and seventies rock music, an athlete's self-discipline and effortless grace, and a puckish love of pranks and play. He was raised in a tradition and expectation of public service, instilled by his father, Ed Meyer, and a deep love of animals and the natural world, instilled by his mother, Linda Lowry.
After attending Horace Greeley high school in ninth grade, Jeff left New York for Phillips Exeter Academy. Here he developed deep friendships, an expertise in Frisbee, and a love of reading and discussion. A teacher suggested a summer service trip to the Dominican Republic that shaped the rest of his life and career. Mentored by Father Luis Quinn, Jeff labored for two summers on rural development projects in San Jose de Ocoa, coming face-to-face with people in dire need following the devastation and dislocation of a hurricane.
Jeff then attended Yale University and majored in Economics and History, still focused on developing a career in building up communities plagued by poverty. His senior thesis, awarded the John Addison Porter prize in History, explored how racial politics had thwarted and starved the idealistic aspirations of the Levister Towers public housing project in Mount Vernon, New York. Decades later, Jeff's thesis was unearthed and featured in a documentary by Mount Vernon's historian Dr Larry Spruill, who had grown up in the Towers.
Jeff was also proud of running the Boston Marathon in 1984, with a time of 2:57:36.
Awarded a Fulbright in 1985 to continue his studies in rural development in Quito, Ecuador, Jeff pivoted to working with US AID, living in the Andean village of Quimiag. He interviewed local farmers about their attitudes toward micro-loans and cemented life-long friendships with the Angel Villacres family in Riobamba. Jeff's energy, playfulness, enthusiasm, and cheeky sense of humor created deep personal bonds across social, geographic, and political barriers throughout his life.
Jeff returned to Yale for law school, where he came to be student director of the Homelessness Clinic and published articles on Connecticut housing policy and, under the mentorship of Harold Koh, on congressional control of international assistance. Jeff was presented the Elm-Ivy award for his clinical work, and the Thomas I. Emerson prize for his housing policy article. After graduating from law school in 1989, Jeff clerked for Second Circuit Judge James L. Oakes, and then, in 1991-92, for Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun. Following these clerkships, Jeff spent a year working for Vermont Legal Aid, representing people in mental health commitment cases.
During his time with Justice Blackmun, Jeff met an O'Connor clerk who soon became the love of his life. Upon discovering that Linda did not read The New York Times, he began delivering annotated clippings to chambers and taught her the merits of trespassing on the roof of the Supreme Court to watch July Fourth fireworks. On Spruce Mountain in Vermont, the two began the adventure of a lifetime founded on mutual admiration and love of the law and all that is just. He married Linda in 1993, and they settled in Branford, Connecticut to raise two amazing children, Cara Ross Meyer and Zane Haskin Lowry Meyer.
Jeff served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in New Haven for nine years, becoming Appeals Chief and earning Department of Justice Director's Awards in 1999 and 2002 for his excellent work investigating and trying difficult document-intensive environmental and white-collar cases. His Yankees-trivia-trained brain gave him such excellent recall for the details of a case that he was known by defense counsel as "the computer."
In 2004, he left the US Attorney's Office to serve under Paul Volcker as senior counsel to the United Nations global investigation of bribery and corruption in its Oil-for-Food Program. The program was designed to relieve some of the suffering of the Iraqi people while still enforcing UN sanctions on Saddam Hussein's oppressive regime. In an echo of Jeff's senior thesis work on the Levister Towers, the investigation revealed how corruption and kick-backs to the regime blunted the idealistic goals of the program. Jeff served as the principal drafter of the investigation's report and co-author, with Mark Califano, of a book based on that report, entitled "Good Intentions Corrupted."
Jeff then joined his wife Linda in academia, teaching international law, legal ethics, criminal procedure, and environmental law at Quinnipiac Law School and co-teaching the Supreme Court Advocacy Clinic at Yale. He published several important law review articles on international sanctions regimes, and led student trips to Guatemala and Nicaragua. Throughout his public service and teaching career, Jeff's focus was on repairing communities in distress, both locally and globally, by fighting corruption and restoring infrastructure.
Jeff was confirmed to the federal district court bench in 2014. He served the District of Connecticut until his death from lymphoma on January 12, 2025. One of his proudest achievements as a judge was developing a Reentry Court, to provide mutual support, encouragement, and aid to those returning home from federal prison, as well as reminding us that sentencing policies should be informed by success stories and not just by recidivism statistics. As in all his work, Jeff built institutions of peace on the grounds of conflict.
But all of these achievements fail to capture Jeff's character. Jeff's family always joked that Jeff, who loved dogs, was half-canine himself.
He took to his work like an Australian Shepherd on high alert, tireless, sharp-eyed, quick and keen. He came through in hard times like a Siberian Husky, bounding impervious through crags of snow and ice, pulling straight as an arrow hour after hour. He loved like a German Shepherd, who won't rest for days until he's found you in the forest on the darkest of nights and carried you safely home. But especially, he played like a first year pup, joyfully rolling and bounding and fetching and knocking you off your feet with the joy of just being. 61 years seems a life unfairly cut short. Until you multiply by seven.
Jeff's spirit will ever nip at our heels to turn us aright, bark in joy when we throw ourselves at life, and curl up three times in our broken hearts. He leaves behind his wife Linda Ross Meyer, parents Linda Pearson, J Edward Meyer III, and Patty Ann Meyer, siblings Dan, Tory, Tim, and Andrew Meyer, Adelaide Hulbert, Matthew and Christopher Pearson, children Cara and Zane Meyer, and numerous cherished nephews and nieces, who would always let him play ball with them.
A memorial will be held at 10am on January 27, 2025 at Battell Chapel in New Haven, Connecticut. Burial will be private. In lieu of flowers, donations in Jeff's memory may be made to the Branford Land Trust https://branfordlandtrust.org/ and Doctors Without Borders https://donate.doctorswithoutborders.org/