Brendan Venter '13 recently accepted a federal clerkship with the Hon. Gary L. Sharpe, chief judge of the U.S. District Court, Northern District of New York. Venter will begin the two-year position in September 2013, after his graduation from Albany Law School and the bar exam.

A Delmar, N.Y., native, Venter attended the University of Notre Dame, earning a bachelor of arts degree in Spanish with a minor in Latin American studies. Upon returning to the Capital Region, he took a job in the immigration law practice group at Whiteman Osterman & Hanna LLP, where he worked for two years.

This experience led to law school, Venter explained, noting that he is still very much interested in immigration law and is currently taking a class on the subject with Professor Christian Sundquist.

Venter has completed several internships since coming to Albany Law, including a semester in Judge Sharpe’s chambers, where he drafted memoranda for orders and conducted legal research for opinions and rulings on motions. Venter also worked for the Hon. William E. McCarthy, associate justice, New York State Supreme Court, Appellate Division, Third Department, as well as at the State University of New York System Administration’s Office of General Counsel (SUNY OGC).

He will return to SUNY OGC for another internship during the spring 2013 semester. An article he wrote while working there, “Threading the First Amendment Needle: Finding a Balance between the Establishment Clause and the Free Exercise Clause on Public College Campuses,” will be published by the National Association of College and University Attorneys later this year.

Venter is an associate editor of the Albany Law Review, and he has been a research assistant to Professor Emeritus David D. Siegel and a teaching assistant for Professor Dorothy Hill’s introductory lawyering class. He is the recipient of the Honorable Frederick J. Scullin, Jr., Scholarship through the Northern District of New York Federal Court Bar Association.

Over the years, Judge Sharpe has hired a number of clerks from Albany Law, including:

Sharon Broton '79
Karen Felter '92
Lawrence M. Orday, Jr. '97
Benjamin M. Friedman '07
Jason Hughes '09
Benjamin Loefke '10