Richard B. Handler

Richard B. Handler is a retired New York State Supreme Court justice who now serves as a neutral at JAMS, handling mediation, arbitration, referee, and special-master assignments, including commercial disputes. This profile concerns the jurist, not Richard B. Handler the chairman and CEO of Jefferies Financial Group, who is a different person with the same name.

His most notable ruling for the gambling industry came in 2012, while sitting on the New York State Supreme Court, when he dismissed charges in a criminal gambling prosecution involving a Texas Hold'em poker game. Handler held that Texas Hold'em is substantially a game of skill rather than a game of chance, a decision that was widely covered in poker and gambling media and cited in later state-level debates over the legality of poker.

Before joining JAMS, Handler spent his judicial career on the New York State Supreme Court, the state's general-jurisdiction trial court. The exact years of his tenure are not consistently documented in the available sources, but his 2012 ruling confirms he was on the bench at that time.

As a JAMS neutral, he now applies his courtroom experience to private dispute resolution, working with parties in mediated and arbitrated proceedings outside the public court system.