Judge Matthew A. Bondy

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Who Is This Judge?

Matthew A. Bondy is a New Yorker all the way through—he attended Bronx Science High School and then Columbia University. He graduated from Brooklyn Law School in 1998 and interned at the Queens district attorney’s office. 

Over his 20-year career, he’s been in and out of the public sector, and in 2022, he ran for a Civil Court seat in Manhattan. Unlike the Brooklyn and Queens Dems, Manhattan’s Democratic Party does not have quite as strong of a stranglehold on who runs for judgeships. Despite the fact that he was an executive board member of the influential Samuel J. Tilden Democratic Club at the time, he had to run a competitive race against another candidate, Terence McCormick. The New York City Bar Association “approved” both candidates and Bondy won 55 percent to 45 percent.

Now, it would make sense for Bondy who, outside of an internship at the Queens district attorney’s office, never appeared to practice criminal law to take his seat on the Civil Court bench. He did, after all, campaign on his expertise as a civil litigator. 

But even though he was elected to Manhattan’s Civil Court, Bondy barely got the opportunity to hear civil matters—he was swiftly reassigned by the Office of Court Administration to Criminal Court in the Bronx.[1] 

1. Judges are shifted around by OCA depending on vacancies and need. In Bondy’s case, that meant being moved to Criminal Court, despite having little background in criminal law.

After three years on the Criminal Court bench in the Bronx, Bondy was transferred to the Civil Court in Manhattan, the position for which he was originally elected, in early 2026. But during his time in the Bronx, defense attorneys told us, it appeared he reflexively set bail for many of their clients who appeared in his courtroom.

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Record on Bail

In an interview with the Village Reform Democratic Club while running for Civil Court judge, Bondy said that he believed “that bail should be used for its intended purpose of ensuring the return of an accused to court and that nobody should be held in jail because they cannot afford to pay it.”

If that’s what Bondy believed in 2021, that’s not quite what happened during the years he sat on the bench in the Bronx. 

As a municipal Criminal Court judge, one of his main responsibilities was to set bail for people accused of felonies—which he did quite often, according to attorneys we spoke with. And in 98.8 percent of bail-eligible cases, he effectively “blocked” affordable bail, using Scrutinize’s terminology, by making the partially secured surety bond more expensive than other forms of bail, largely by favoring commercial bonds. 

One defense attorney who practiced in Bondy’s courtroom said of the judge, “If the client was Jesus Christ themself, Bondy would still probably set bail.”

Judges are, at least as outlined in state law, only supposed to set cash bail at an amount that would guarantee a defendant’s return to court—not an amount that automatically sends them to Rikers because they can’t afford it. 

“Bondy was so knee-jerk reflexive if the prosecution asked for bail,” said another defense attorney who also practiced in front of him in the Bronx, that he would both set bail and set it “at or close to the amount that the prosecution asked for.”

That attorney explained that in their experience, more seasoned judges have a sense of how far a case is likely to go, whether the defendant will even be indicted, or whether charges will be dropped. Because Bondy was new to Criminal Court, he didn’t appear to be able to make those determinations, they said: “Some judges who are familiar with Criminal Court or the Bronx will consider that and have that figure into their bail setting or non-bail setting. But a judge who has no real insight into the life of a case beyond Criminal Court, for a Bondy-type, they’re far more likely to take the prosecution at their word and take whatever is requested.” 

We asked Bondy, via OCA, about his bail decisions; we did not get a response. 

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Borough Matters

The Bronx’s criminal justice system operates differently than in the city’s other boroughs. It has both the highest dismissal rates by prosecutors in the city, as well as the highest rate of acquittals at trial. (There’s a reason the term “Bronx Jury” has floated around for decades as shorthand for a jury that’s inclined to be more sympathetic to criminal defendants than prosecutors.) 

But the fact that many cases are eventually dropped by prosecutors while others end in acquittals hasn’t stopped the NYPD from arresting a lot of residents of the borough[2], who then need to be arraigned in Criminal Court. 

2. In 2025, there were 51,394 total arrests in the Bronx, which has a population of 1.47 million people. Meanwhile, in Brooklyn, which has a population almost double that of the Bronx, there were 64,204 total arrests in 2025. 

Enter Bondy.

According to the attorney who described the judge as “knee-jerk reflexive” when it came to bail, Bondy “intentionally or not, telegraphed…in his courtroom that he didn’t want to be there.” They described times when Bondy would delay making any decisions at all during hearings. “He seemed to have, frankly, a disdain for the litigants and counsel appearing before him as well as the system,” said that attorney. “It certainly doesn’t feel good and doesn’t instill a lot of confidence if you are the person who is accused, who is appearing in front of this judge who very much seems to not want to be there.”

Bondy’s arraignments would go on forever, the two defense attorneys we spoke with told us, with one telling us his courtroom operated “at a snail’s pace.” And while sometimes attorneys would appreciate thoroughness from a judge, Bondy’s slow pace could also make court appearances in front of him difficult. 

“Putting aside attorneys, if you’re someone appearing in court as a defendant, an appearance that should take five minutes ends up being an all-day event. It’s a complete lack of regard for anyone else’s time but the judge,” said one of the attorneys we spoke with. “But then before lunch, he’d call around the courtroom and suddenly be in a hurry. He was ponderously slow.” They added, “He was loath to make decisions, which if you’re a judge, you have to be prepared to make decisions.”

“My best description of him is if you’re seen the film ‘Zootopia’, he’s the character ‘Flash,’ the Sloth at the DMV,” they said, referring to the ironically named sloth from the animated films.

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Rebuttal

We reached out to OCA multiple times via email and phone with a detailed list of questions. Unfortunately, OCA did not provide any answers.