Suffolk County District Attorney Raymond A. Tierney is a career prosecutor, having served more than 30 years as a prosecutor at both the state and federal levels. Elected on November 2, 2021, and re-elected in 2025, he is committed to enforcing the law in an ethical and accountable manner to protect the citizens of Suffolk County.
Ray started his career in law enforcement as an assistant district attorney in the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office in 1992. He worked his way up through the ranks of the office from prosecuting misdemeanors, to trials of kidnappings, arsons, violent sexual assaults, and murder.
In 2008, Ray starting as an assistant United States attorney in the Long Island Criminal Division of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York, where he oversaw complex criminal investigations and long-term international criminal prosecutions involving international fugitives, and death penalty protocols. He debriefed the Attorney General on the status of MS-13 prosecutions nationwide and in New York.
Between 2019 and 2021, Tierney served as executive assistant district Attorney in the Kings County District Attorney’s Office, working for DA Eric Gonzalez. Ray was the executive in charge of the Violent Criminal Enterprises Bureau, Crime Strategies Unit, and Body Worn Camera Unit.
As DA, Ray has proven himself to be a great collaborator, effectively bringing a task force approach to combat violent crime, dismantle all manner of organized crime, and confront societal epidemics. His Gilgo Beach Homicide Task Force solved and charged defendant Rex Heuermann for the serial homicides of seven victims dating back to the 1990s. In September 2025, in a precedent-setting ruling following a months-long Frye Hearing, the presiding judge ruled to allow advanced DNA evidence for the first time in New York State. In April 2026, Heuermann pleaded guilty to the murder of the seven victims on the indictment and admitted to killing an eighth woman. On June 17, 2026, Heuermann was sentenced to three consecutive sentences of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole for killing three of the victims. Heuermann was also sentenced to a consecutive sentence of 100 years to life imprisonment for the murders of the remaining four victims on the indictment.
Ray continues to broaden his portfolio with novel coalitions, such as the employee-friendly Wage Theft Task Force, the environmentally-friendly Evergreen Initiative, and the first-of-its-kind Animal Crime Victims Fund. Tierney has also been a champion of “Chelsey’s Law,” which would allow drug dealers to be charged with homicide for the overdoses that they cause, and for closing the state’s “drugged driving loophole,” which immunizes a substantial amount of impaired driving.
Ray is a lifelong resident of Suffolk County, New York, where he resides with his wife, Erica, and their four children.
