Daniel Sachs Goldman (Dan Goldman)

Daniel Sachs Goldman, widely known as Dan Goldman, is a Jewish American lawyer and Democratic politician whose career has joined federal law enforcement, constitutional oversight and congressional service. He first built his public record prosecuting organized crime and securities fraud, then became nationally known as lead majority counsel in the first impeachment inquiry concerning President Donald Trump. In 2023, he began representing New York’s 10th Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Goldman’s path illustrates how legal training can operate across several layers of public life. He moved from criminal trials to a rare constitutional proceeding and then to elected office, working throughout with institutions that depend on evidence, oversight and public trust. His record encompasses complex prosecutions, congressional investigations, ethics enforcement and legislative initiatives involving elections, immigration, health care, education and public safety.

Jewish upbringing and legal education

Goldman was born in Washington, D.C., on February 26, 1976, to Susan Sachs Goldman and Richard W. Goldman. His father, a federal prosecutor, died when Dan was a child. Goldman grew up in a Conservative Jewish family with his sister, Alice, and his younger brother, Bill, who later died at age 38 in a plane crash. His family is connected to the Haas family associated with Levi Strauss & Co.; his great-grandfather Walter A. Haas served as the company’s president.

He earned a bachelor’s degree in history from Yale University in 1998. Before attending law school, he worked as a researcher and writer for NBC Sports. Goldman received his law degree with distinction from Stanford Law School in 2005 and went on to clerk for Judge Charles Breyer of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California and Judge Robert D. Sack of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Those clerkships exposed him to both federal trial practice and appellate review before he entered public prosecution.

A decade as a federal prosecutor

From 2007 to 2017, Goldman served as an assistant United States attorney in the Southern District of New York, one of the country’s most prominent federal prosecutorial offices. His cases involved Russian organized crime, members of established crime families, white-collar offenses and securities fraud. Such prosecutions required him to assemble documentary and financial evidence, work with witnesses and investigators, and explain complicated transactions clearly to judges and juries.

One of his best-known assignments was the prosecution of sports bettor Billy Walters. As lead prosecutor, Goldman helped secure Walters’s 2017 conviction for insider trading in a case centered on the use of confidential corporate information to make profitable stock trades. The trial demonstrated Goldman’s ability to direct a complex financial prosecution with substantial public attention and became a defining example of his work enforcing securities law.

After leaving the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Goldman became a legal analyst for NBC News and MSNBC and a fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice. These roles allowed him to interpret legal proceedings for a broad audience and to engage publicly with questions involving democracy, courts and government institutions.

Lead counsel in a historic impeachment inquiry

In February 2019, Goldman joined the House Intelligence Committee as senior adviser and director of investigations. He later became lead majority counsel in the House’s first impeachment inquiry concerning President Donald Trump. Goldman questioned witnesses during the committee’s televised hearings and played a central role in organizing and presenting the inquiry’s factual and legal record.

In December 2019, he testified at a public hearing of the House Judiciary Committee. After the House approved articles of impeachment, he served as lead counsel to the House impeachment managers during the resulting Senate trial. Whatever one’s partisan view of the proceeding, the assignment placed Goldman at the center of a seldom-used constitutional process. His task was to connect witness testimony and documentary evidence to constitutional standards while explaining the House’s oversight case to Congress and the public.

Election to the House of Representatives

Goldman briefly sought the Democratic nomination for New York attorney general in 2021. He withdrew after incumbent Attorney General Letitia James decided to run for reelection and endorsed her campaign. In June 2022, he entered the race for New York’s newly configured 10th Congressional District. He won a crowded Democratic primary with 25.8 percent of the vote and then prevailed by a large margin in the general election, taking office on January 3, 2023.

He won reelection in 2024, securing 66.1 percent in the Democratic primary and approximately 81 percent in the general election. In June 2026, Goldman lost the Democratic primary for the following term to Brad Lander. The result meant he would not be his party’s nominee for another term, although he continued serving for the remainder of his existing congressional term.

Legislation, oversight and institutional accountability

Goldman’s prosecutorial and investigative background shaped his work in the House. During the 119th Congress, he served on the Judiciary Committee and the Homeland Security Committee, including subcommittees responsible for crime, federal government surveillance, constitutional questions, counterterrorism, law enforcement and intelligence. These assignments placed his legal experience within Congress’s wider responsibilities for legislation and executive oversight.

Early in his tenure, Goldman joined Representative Ritchie Torres in filing an ethics complaint against Representative George Santos after extensive falsehoods about Santos’s résumé and background came to light. The action provided a concrete example of Goldman’s emphasis on institutional accountability: he applied that principle not only to executive officials but also to members of the House itself.

Goldman introduced legislation across a broad range of public needs. His Early Voting Act addressed access to voting before Election Day. The African Burial Ground International Memorial Museum and Educational Center Act sought to preserve and interpret the history represented by New York’s African Burial Ground. Other proposals addressed Medicaid services for people with serious mental illness, efficiency in immigration courts and court procedures better suited to children, efforts against drug cartels, and access to higher education. These were legislative initiatives rather than achievements that all became enacted law, but they show how he used his office to identify institutional barriers and propose specific federal responses.

Israel, antisemitism and Jewish public responsibility

Goldman’s Jewish identity has been particularly visible in his work on antisemitism, the security of Jewish institutions and the relationship between the United States and Israel. He has supported the U.S.–Israel alliance, opposed the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel and described BDS as antisemitism presented in political form. At the same time, he has stated his support for a two-state resolution to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.

Following the October 7, 2023 attacks, Goldman voted for a House resolution affirming support for Israel. His position on Israel existed alongside liberal domestic-policy commitments and membership in Democratic congressional coalitions. That combination made his tenure an example of the complicated responsibilities borne by Jewish elected officials in the United States: representing a diverse constituency, responding to antisemitism, supporting Israel’s security and participating in a deeply contested debate through the institutions of law, diplomacy and democratic government.

Why Daniel Sachs Goldman’s legacy belongs in Moreshet

Daniel Sachs Goldman merits inclusion in Moreshet because his career connects several important traditions of Jewish American public service: professional law enforcement, defense of democratic institutions, legislative participation and direct engagement with antisemitism and Israel. His contribution lies not simply in the offices he held, but in the work performed through them—leading complex financial prosecutions, presenting evidence in a consequential constitutional proceeding, seeking accountability within Congress and developing legislation on voting, health, immigration, education and public safety.

For an archive of Jewish and Israeli heritage, his story also records Jewish identity expressed through broad civic responsibility in the United States. His support for Israel, opposition to BDS and attention to Jewish communal security place him within an ongoing discussion about how Jewish leaders serve in pluralistic democratic institutions. Moreshet.com documents Goldman’s record not as a claim of universal agreement with every political position, but as evidence of the tangible influence a Jewish lawyer and legislator exercised on American law, public institutions and debate.