Overview[1]

Julien Xavier Neals was born on January 1, 1965, in Newark, New Jersey. He earned a BA degree from Morehouse College in 1986, and a JD degree from the Emory University School of Law in 1991.

After completing his legal studies, Neals served as a law clerk to Judge Seymour Margulies of the New Jersey Superior Court in Hudson County, New Jersey, from 1991-1992.

From 1992-2006 he worked in private practice – first as an associate, then as a partner — at the Secaucus-based law firm of Chasan, Leyner & Lamparello P.C., where he practiced general litigation in state and federal courts.

From 2006 to 2014, Neal worked for the City of Newark as:

• Chief Judge of the city’s Municipal Court from 2006 to 2008
• Corporation Counsel from 2008 to 2010
• Business Administrator from 2010 to 2014.

From 2008-2014, Neals contributed money to the political campaigns of high-profile Democrats like Cory Booker, Barack Obama, and Donald Payne.

Since 2008, Neals has been associated with Volunteer Lawyers for Justice, a New Jersey-based organization whose mission is to “advanc[e] racial, social, and economic justice” by providing “civil legal services” for “people experiencing poverty.”

On February 26, 2015, President Barack Obama nominated Neals to a judgeship with the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey. Neals received a hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee on September 30, 2015, and 36 days later  his nomination was favorably reported out of committee by voice vote. But when Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell refused to schedule a full Senate vote on the nomination, it expired when the 114th Congress ended on January 3, 2017.

While Neals was waiting for the aforementioned confirmation process to play out, he was employed as County Counsel of Bergen County, New Jersey – a position he held from 2015-2021. He was also Bergen’s Acting County Administrator from 2016-2021.

On April 19, 2021, President Joe Biden nominated Neals once again for a judgeship with the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey. This time, Neals was confirmed by a 66-33 vote in the U.S. Senate on June 8, 2021. (Senate Democrats supported his nomination 48-0, Republicans opposed it 33-17, and Independents were split 1-1.)

Blaming Artificial Intelligence for Made-up Quotes and “Facts” in His Legal Opinion

On June 30, 2025, Neals issued an opinion that denied a motion by Andrew Lichtman, a partner at the law firm of Willkie Farr & Gallagher, asking Neals to dismiss a lawsuit that a shareholder had filed against Lichtman’s client, the biopharmaceutical company CorMedix Inc.  The suit alleged that CorMedix had lied about one of its drugs, DefenCath, during a failed effort to gain Food & Drug Administration (FDA) approval. But Judge Neals’ decision was riddled with blatant inaccuracies – including made-up quotes and mistaken references to the outcomes of prior court cases – all derived from careless research that relied on an artificial-intelligence program.

Neals’ errors were pointed out in a July 22, 2025 letter in which Andrew Lichtman wrote to the judge:

“While Defendants do not seek reconsideration of the Opinion …, we wish to bring to the Court’s attention a series of errors in the Opinion—including three instances in which the outcomes of cases cited in the Opinion were misstated (i.e., the motions to dismiss were granted, not denied) and numerous instances in which quotes were mistakenly attributed to decisions that do not contain such quotes—so that the Court may consider whether amendment or any other action should be taken.”

Following are three verbatim quotes excerpted from Lichtman’s letter, citing specific examples of instances where Judge Neals, in his Opinion of June 30, had misrepresented prior court positions and case outcomes:

• First, the Opinion cites approvingly to Dang v. Amarin Corp. PLC…. The Opinion says: “In Dang v. Amarin Corp. PLC, the court applied the core operations doctrine where executives made misleading statements about Vascepa, the company’s only product, while ignoring FDA Form 483s and audits identifying significant regulatory risks.” […] However, the Dang court dismissed the plaintiffs’ securities fraud complaint and specifically rejected the plaintiffs’
  argument under the “core operations” doctrine. […] In determining that the plaintiffs failed to allege misleading statements about Vascepa, the court explained that “the core operations doctrine does not permit imputing the requisite scienter regarding any statement made within a broad perimeter of the relevant core operations to an executive.” […] In addition, the Opinion states that the executives in Dang “ignor[ed] FDA Form 483s and audits identifying significant regulatory risks,” […] but Dang does not contain any discussion of FDA Form 483s or audits. Similarly, the Opinion quotes Dang as referring to “classic evidence of scienter,” […] but the case does not contain that quote.
• Second, the Opinion relies on In re Intelligroup Securities Litigation […] to support the following proposition: “Courts have repeatedly held that SOX certifications can support a strong inference of scienter when executives certify internal controls while aware of or recklessly disregarding serious deficiencies, especially when the issues pertain to core operations.” […] The Opinion goes on to say that, “[i]n Intelligroup, the court found that certifying executives made actionable misstatements by signing SOX certifications despite knowledge of serious internal control failures. The certifications became ‘false statements in their own right’ where executives were aware of red flags or contradictory information.” […] However, as in Dang, the court in Intelligroup granted the defendants’ motion to dismiss in its entirety. The court concluded that the plaintiffs failed to allege scienter, and explicitly concluded that “[it] does not draw any inferences of Defendants’ scienter from their SOX certifications. […] Moreover, Intelligroup does not contain the quotation about “false statements in their own right,” as referenced in the Opinion.
• Third, the Opinion contains the following statement in the scienter section: “Similarly, in Stichting Pensioenfonds Metaal en Techniek v. Verizon Commc’ns Inc. […], access to internal emails and memos warning about inaccuracies supported a finding of scienter.” […] We have not been able to identify this case from the Southern District of New York, but we believe the Court was referring to a case with the same caption from the District of New Jersey. […] In Stichting, the court granted the defendants’ motion to dismiss in its entirety and specifically rejected all of the plaintiffs’ arguments in support of scienter. (“For the reasons indicated below, I find that all five of plaintiffs’ arguments are meritless …. [A]n inference that defendants lacked scienter is more plausible than an inference that defendants made statements with scienter.”).

The American Bar Association Journal also points out citations, included in Lichtman’s letter, of several quotes that Neals attributed to court cases in which the quotes did not in fact exist. Those quotes included the following:

• “The absence of insider trading is not dispositive.”
• “The importance of the product to the company’s financial success supports the inference of scienter.”
• “The lack of any competing inference that is more plausible than plaintiffs’ suggested inference … reinforces a strong inference of scienter.”

On July 23, 2025, Neals withdrew his Opinion of June 30, writing in an order:

“The Court is in receipt of Defendants counsel’s letter dated July 22, 2025. On June 30, 2025, the Court issued an Opinion and Order. (ECF Nos. 114, 115.) That Opinion and Order were entered in error. Accordingly, the Court directs the Clerk of Court to remove the Opinion and Order at ECF Nos. 114 and 115 from the docket. A subsequent Opinion and Order will follow.”

In an October 20, 2025 letter to Robert J. Conrad Jr., Director of the Administrative Office of the United States Courts, Neals explained that the errors in his Opinion of June 30 had occurred as a result of mistakes and carelessness on the part of a law-school intern. Wrote Neals:

“In simplest terms, the June 30, 2025 CorMedix decision was released in error – human error – and withdrawn as soon as it was brought to the attention of my chambers, swiftly avoiding any irreparable harm to litigants or counsel…. [A] ‘temporary assistant,’ specifically, a law school intern, used CHATGPT to perform legal research in connection with the CorMedix decision. In doing so, the intern acted without authorization, without disclosure, and contrary to not only chambers policy but also the relevant law school policy. …

“The standard practice in my chambers is for every draft opinion to undergo several levels of review, including through cite checking tools, before being finalized and docketed. In this case, however, the opinion that was mistakenly docketed on June 30, 2025, was an early draft that had not gone through the standard review process. It was a draft that should have never been docketed….

“As soon as I verified the apparent mistakes identified in defense counsel’s July 22, 2025 letter, I maintained transparency and the chronology of the docket in the case by noting that the June 30, 2025 Opinion and Order had been removed from the record. I did not wish to leave a flawed opinion on the record and did not want parties, including pro se litigants, to believe that the erroneously released draft should be cited to or relied on in future cases. Thus, acting in full transparency and for the benefit of litigants and attorneys, I removed the inaccurate Opinion and Order from public view on the docket. …

“Consistent with the Code of Conduct for United States Judges, I took immediate and appropriate action to address the student intern’s conduct that resulted in the mistake….”

Footnotes:

1. https://www.fedbar.org/massachusetts-chapter//wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2019/10/Summer-2014-Newsletter-pdf.pdf
   https://ballotpedia.org/Indira_Talwani