Ex-colleague BPU chief’s successor is ‘cool as a cucumber’

Chris Christie‘s nomination of Robert M. Hanna to succeed Lee Solomon as president of the Board of Public Utilities came as no surprise to a former co-worker of Hanna’s while he was handling white-collar criminal cases at Gibbons P.C., in Newark.

Chris Christie‘s nomination of Robert M. Hanna to succeed Lee Solomon as president of the Board of Public Utilities came as no surprise to a former co-worker of Hanna’s while he was handling white-collar criminal cases at Gibbons P.C., in Newark.

“I would describe Bob as cool as a cucumber,” said Fred Alworth, a director at Gibbons, who said his former coworker has done an outstanding job at the Division of Law, which Alworth described as one of the most difficult jobs in state government.

“He never gets rattled. He is a consummate professional, and he’s exactly the type of person that you would want in any leadership post with substantial responsibility.”

Alworth said that sense of calm carried over to the employees he supervised. He said Hanna will be a good leader for the BPU.

“He has very sound judgment,” Alworth said. “He will know what he needs to do in any situation and will be an outstanding leader in whatever capacity he needs to be.”

From 1990 through 2006, Hanna worked in the U.S. attorney’s office for the District of New Jersey, in Newark, and was an assistant U.S. attorney under Christie. Hanna initially worked in the office’s civil division before switching to the fraud division in 1997. He later served as chief of the securities and health care fraud unit and criminal health care fraud coordinator before leaving for Gibbons in 2006.