Michelle Sheehan Prior joined the Long Island office of McLaughlin & Stern in September 2022.  She is a member of the Municipal Department, with a focus on municipal, zoning and land use matters for numerous Villages and other local governments on Long Island.  Ms. Prior also serves as the Village Prosecutor for the Village of Kings Point and the Village of Roslyn Estates. 

Ms. Prior began her legal career as an Assistant District Attorney in the Nassau County District Attorney’s Office.  She then served as an Assistant Deputy Attorney General for the NYS Organized Crime Task Force and was Cross-Designated as Assistant District Attorney in the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, as part of the Construction Industry Strike Force investigating Organized Crime in the construction industry. After those initial years in the public sector Ms. Prior was a solo practitioner as well as “Of Counsel” for Ackerman, Levine, Cullen, Brickman & Limmer, LLP for over 20 years.

Ms. Prior returned to the Nassau County District Attorney’s Office in 2016 and served as a Senior Assistant District Attorney in the Financial Crimes Bureau of the Office.  Additionally, she was then appointed  Chief of the Public Assistance Fraud Unit, prosecuting Welfare and Unemployment Insurance fraud.

Ms. Prior was graduated summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa from the State University of New York at Albany with a B.A. in English and Communications.   She received her law degree from St. John’s University School of Law and was a St. Thomas More Scholar as well as a Dean’s List scholar.  During Law School Ms. Prior was a law assistant to the Hon. George C. Pratt, Federal Judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, and to the Hon. Mark A. Costantino, Judge of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of NY.