Otto G. Obermaier, a former defense lawyer who restored a tone of modest judiciousness as the chief federal prosecutor in New York after five years of breathless investigations under Rudolph W. Giuliani, died on Friday at a retirement home in Fairfax County, Va. He was 89.
The cause was complications of a fall, his son Joseph said.
Mr. Obermaier served as the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York from September 1989 to February 1993, overseeing a jurisdiction ripe with targets ranging from Wall Street swindlers to major organized crime figures.
Compared with Mr. Giuliani’s swashbuckling public persona and mixed record of pugnacious prosecutions, Mr. Obermaier was widely viewed as a temperate caretaker who also pursued corrupt unions and financiers, but less confrontationally and without his predecessor’s flair for dramatic arrests.
In 1991, his office filed a lawsuit that pressured top officers of a longshoremen’s union, identified as a bastion of Mafia power on the Brooklyn waterfront, to quit and accept a court-appointed monitor for the local.
In 1992, in a settlement that was crucial to the survival of the investment house Salomon Brothers, Mr. Obermaier’s office refrained from bringing criminal charges against the bank for systematically submitting billions of dollars in phony bids to buy more Treasury securities than federal regulations allowed.
Instead, Salomon agreed to a more lenient $290 million settlement, which reflected the firm’s willingness, after first misleading investigators, to disclose details of the scandal and to prevent the scheme from recurring.
As head of perhaps the most prestigious prosecutor’s office in the country, Mr. Obermaier hired Denise L. Cote as chief of the criminal division. She was the first woman to hold that post and was later named a federal judge.
When Mr. Obermaier retired before his four-year term expired so that the new Democratic president, Bill Clinton, could choose his successor, he was followed by Mary Jo White, the first woman named to the post.
Otto George Obermaier was born on April 16, 1936, in Manhattan to Joseph Obermaier, who worked in an ice cream factory, and Rosina (Abt) Obermaier, a seamstress.
After graduating from Xavier High School in Manhattan, he received a degree in electrical engineering from Manhattan College in 1957. By then, he had decided against an engineering career, but he capitalized on his training to become an examiner with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in Washington. In 1960, he earned a law degree from Georgetown University Law Center.
Besides his son Joseph, survivors include his wife, Patricia (Favier) Obermaier, whom he married in 1961; his daughters, Patrica Lee and Karen; another son, Thomas; and seven grandchildren.
After serving in the Army and as a law clerk to Judge Richard H. Levet of the Federal District Court in New York, Mr. Obermaier was hired in 1964 as an assistant prosecutor in the office of U.S. Attorney Robert M. Morgenthau. He handled narcotics, tax evasion, bribery and organized crime cases.
Among those he successfully prosecuted was John Dioguardi, a labor racketeer and extortionist associated with the Lucchese crime family; he was sentenced to five years in prison for bankruptcy fraud in 1967.
From 1968 to 1970, Mr. Obermaier was chief trial counsel in the New York office of the Securities and Exchange Commission. In 1970, he was associate counsel to the Knapp Commission, which exposed police corruption in New York.
For 19 years, he was a leading defense attorney, founding a law firm in 1970 that became known as Obermaier, Morvillo & Abramowitz. He established another firm in 2006 with John S. Martin Jr., who preceded Mr. Giuliani as U.S. attorney in New York.
Mr. Obermaier was nominated as U.S. attorney by President George H.W. Bush at the recommendation of a screening committee appointed by Senator Alfonse M. D’Amato, Republican of New York.
He was chosen over the objections of Mr. Giuliani, who originally cautioned that as a longtime defense lawyer, Mr. Obermaier might not be rigorous enough in pursuing white collar criminals.
When Mr. Obermaier was appointed, Mr. Morgenthau, by then the Manhattan district attorney, told The New York Times: “He’s a particularly strong candidate — head and shoulders above anybody else who has been mentioned, both in ability and experience.”
Mr. Morgenthau added, “He is a solid, stable, tough lawyer — and he is not politically ambitious.”
Mr. Obermaier intentionally began his tenure as chief prosecutor without a bang, setting the tone that defined his administration.
“I have no message to deliver and I will have no message to deliver,” he said. “The prosecutor’s office speaks in the courtroom.”
Sam Roberts is an obituaries reporter for The Times, writing mini-biographies about the lives of remarkable people.
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