TRUSTEE
MERCER COUNTY

Elissa Grodd Schragger was appointed the Director of Law and Township Attorney for the Township of Hamilton in February 2020. Prior to her appointment, she was an attorney with Mason Griffin & Pierson, Esq., where she litigated to the New Jersey Supreme Court affirming that her client, a township, could condemn a mobile home park for the public purpose of deed restricting each lot for affordable housing.  She graduated Vassar College in 1993 with honors on her Senior Thesis and after that, she graduated from the University of Miami School of Law in 1996.  Upon graduation, she practiced law in Miami: as part of the legal team she defended a subcontractor and its employees criminally charged in connection with the ValuJet crash of 1996 and then defended cruise lines in Jones Act litigation and class actions.  She moved to New Jersey in 2001 and continued in her complex civil litigation practice, focusing on fraud and other corporate misfeasance.  Since becoming the Director of Law, Ms. Grodd Schragger has overseen the legal aspects of the Township’s response to COVID-19 and civil unrest, rewritten significant portions of the Township Code, assisted in finalizing the Township Fire District Consolidation, spearheaded a legal strategy to manage abandoned properties, continues to be involved in rehabilitation projects and brought suit against Trenton Water Works.  In her free time, she is President of Mercer County Federation of Democratic Women.  She lives with her husband Andy and her two teenage children in Lawrenceville.