Whitney North Seymour Jr.

Mike Seymour
United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York
In office
January 16, 1970 – June 4, 1973
PresidentRichard Nixon
Preceded byRobert Morgenthau
Succeeded byPaul J. Curran
Member of the New York State Senate
In office
1966–1968
Preceded by
Succeeded by
Constituency
Personal details
Born
Whitney North Seymour Jr.

(1923-07-07)July 7, 1923
Huntington, West Virginia, U.S.
DiedJune 29, 2019(2019-06-29) (aged 95)
Torrington, Connecticut, U.S.
Political partyRepublican
Spouse
Catryna Ten Eyck
(m. 1951; died 2017)
Children2
RelativesWhitney North Seymour (father)
Thaddeus Seymour (brother)
Education
Military service
Branch/serviceUnited States Army
Years of service1943–1945
RankCaptain
Battles/warsWorld War II

Whitney North Seymour Jr. (July 7, 1923 – June 29, 2019), known to friends as Mike Seymour,[1][2] was an American politician and attorney from New York City. Born to a prominent family, Seymour graduated from Princeton University and Yale Law School and served in the United States Army during World War II. He served in the New York State Senate from 1966 to 1968 and as U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York from 1970 to 1973.

As U.S. Attorney, Seymour prosecuted a number of high-profile organized crime and corruption cases. A moderate Republican, Seymour unsuccessfully sought a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives in 1968, and unsuccessfully sought the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate in 1982. Seymour was an attorney for many years with the law firm of Simpson Thacher & Bartlett, but left in the early 1980s to form a smaller law firm. In 1986, he was appointed as independent counsel to investigate former Reagan White House official Michael Deaver, and successfully secured a perjury conviction the next year.

Seymour co-founded the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmentalist group, in 1970. As a civic leader in New York, he served on a number of boards, and played an important role in the Municipal Art Society's push for passage of the city's 1965 Landmarks Law. Seymour wrote three books and, in later life, co-wrote a one-act play that was performed off-Broadway. He died in 2019 at age 95.

  1. ^ Cite error: The named reference NYTObit was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  2. ^ Cite error: The named reference Kurtz was invoked but never defined (see the help page).