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| “ | Something they can't teach you at Fordham? How to belong. People on the eighth floor who nod at you in the elevator, they can smell the flop sweat and the garlic coming off your cheap suit. | „ |
| ~ Gallagher antagonizing Dominic Carisi Jr. |
Charles Gallagher is the main antagonist of the Law & Order: Special Victims Unit episode "The Long Arm of The Witness". He is a corrupt judge who sexually abuses several women, and abuses his position to escape punishment.
He was portrayed by Josh Stamberg, who also portrayed Alex Barnes in Justified and Tyler Hayward in WandaVision.
Biography[]
Past[]
Gallagher is from a wealthy, politically connected family. As mentioned by Judge Lewis, they were a fine family and had a good home.
He later attended Hudson University as a legacy. There, he raped Carmen Benetiz after spiking her drink, threatening to kill her unless she gave him what he wanted. Later, he and his frat brothers gang-raped a woman named April Kelly. Gallagher also threatened Kelly's friend, future Assistant District Attorney Isaiah Holmes, into keeping quiet after he learned of his crime. He also frequently demeaned Holmes, a gay, mixed-race man, with racist and homophobic insults.
He later attended and graduated from Harvard Law School, earning his law degree. Gallagher became a prosecutor and served for eight years until becoming a judge and law professor at his alma mater. He often ruled in favor of male defendants in rape and sexual abuse cases, praising them for coming from "good homes", while chastising their female victims for their supposedly "promiscuous" behavior and for damaging their rapists' reputations. He also developed a reputation for sexually harassing and assaulting women, including his own employees, but his victims were too intimidated by his political clout and stature in the legal community to publicly call out his behavior.
"The Long Arm of The Witness"[]
When Gallagher acquits an accused rapist, reversing the jury's guilty verdict, the victim's lawyer, Rita Calhoun, tells her friend, Captain Olivia Benson of the NYPD's Special Victims Unit, that he made his career by protecting wealthy abusers at the expense of their victims' rights. A suspicious Benson asks ADA Dominick Carisi, Jr., one of her former detectives, to look into Gallagher's behavior both in and out of court to see if he has anything to hide.
With Carisi's help, Benson discovers that Gallagher has been sexually abusing women for over 30 years. In addition to Kelly, he finds out that Gallagher had also raped Hudson Law students Carmen Benitez, Francine Giamba, and Maya Bell, all of whom he had victimized while mentoring them as their professor. After finding campus security memos confirming their accounts of being assaulted by Gallagher, Benson arrests him for several counts of rape.
Carisi serves as the prosecutor in Gallagher's case, while Calhoun represents Gallagher, even though she personally despises him. Gallagher tries to intimidate Carisi into dropping the case, but when Carisi refuses, Gallagher threatens to ruin his career and hurls ethnic slurs at him, at one point calling him a "dumb dago" who smells of "flop sweat and garlic".
When Holmes takes the stand to testify about Gallagher raping Kelly, Gallagher accosts him in the men's room and tries to intimidate him, all while bragging about getting away with what he did to Kelly and several other women. Unbeknownst to Gallagher, however, Holmes records the conversation, to use as insurance in case he was threatened or attacked. Holmes later plays the recording for the trial judge, Annette Lewis. Facing damning evidence of his crimes, Gallagher has Calhoun engineer a lenient plea bargain in which he will serve 12 months of house arrest for sexual misconduct.
After Gallagher pleads guilty and admits to his crimes, Lewis asks Carisi if his office is satisfied with the deal, and he replies that they are. Lewis then says that she is not, and proceeds to throw out the deal, sentencing Gallagher instead to one year of incarceration in federal prison. When Gallagher protests, Lewis throws his own words back at him, reprimanding him for discrediting his "good home" and "fine reputation". Gallagher is then taken away to begin serving his sentence, and is presumably disbarred.
Trivia[]
- Gallagher is based on numerous judicial officials who have been accused of sexual assault and sexual harassment:
- Brett Kavanaugh, a Washington, D.C. judge who in 2018 was accused of sexually assaulting a female classmate in high school during his ultimately successful conformation hearings for a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court
- Roy Moore, an Alabama judge who ran for U.S. Senate in 2017, only to be accused of sexually harassing and abusing several women and teenage girls in the 1970s and 1980s
- Clarence Thomas, a Georgia judge who in 1991 was accused of sexually harassing a female subordinate, Anita Hill, during his ultimately successful confirmation hearings for a seat on the U.S Supreme Court
- David W. Lanier, a Tennessee judge who in 1992 was found guilty of sexually assaulting eight women and was sentenced to 25 years in prison
- The opening case Gallagher presided over reflects Judge Aaron Persky's decision in the People v. Turner case to sentence Brock Turner, a college student who had been found guilty of sexual assault and attempted rape, to only six months in jail.
External links[]
- Charles Gallagher on the Law & Order Wiki
