U.S. Department of Justice building in Washington, D.C., June 6, 2020. Photo: Diego M. Radzinschi/ALM

A self-proclaimed "men's right attorney" has been identified as the primary suspect in a shooting that killed U.S. District Judge Esther Salas' son and seriously injured her husband Sunday night.

New York attorney Roy Den Hollander, who was found dead of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot in the town of Rockland, New York, is the primary suspect, according to the FBI, the U.S. Attorney's Office in New Jersey, and media reports.

Den Hollander's body was found 65 miles north of where the shootings took place. On Sunday, a gunman killed Salas' son, Daniel Anderl, and left her husband, defense attorney Mark Anderl, in critical condition, on the doorstep of their North Brunswick home. The suspect was reportedly wearing a FedEx uniform. Daniel Anderl, the couple's only child, was a rising junior at Catholic University of America in Washington and his father, a former assistant Essex County prosecutor, has a criminal defense practice in Perth Amboy.

Roy Den Hollander.

Den Hollander, whose website quotes him as being the "anti-feminist lawyer," and another attorney had filed a suit concerning the ability of women to register for the military draft in 2015 that was pending before Salas, but they were recently replaced by a new attorney for the plaintiffs.

Among Den Hollander's cases as a "men's rights" attorney was a suit he filed against nightclubs that impose bottle service fees for male customers but not females, and against bars that gave cheaper drinks to women on ladies' night. In a post on his website discussing that litigation and criticizing judges who ruled against him, he said: "This trilogy of lawsuits for men's rights makes clear that there are now two classes of people in America: one of princesses—females, and the other of servants—males. Governments, from local to state to federal, treat men as second class citizens whose rights can be violated with impunity when it benefits females. Need I say the courts are prejudiced, need I say they are useless, need I say it's time for men to take the law into their hands?"

Den Hollander attended George Washington University Law School and Columbia University Business School, according to his resume. He worked at Cravath, Swaine & Moore and for Kroll Associates, but his most recent position was performing document review for employment agencies hired by Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison; Shook, Hardy & Bacon; Simpson Thacher & Bartlett; Reed Smith, Ernst & Young and Prudential Insurance Co., according to his resume.

Den Hollander's lawsuit targeting the draft was filed in 2015 along with attorney Michael Daher of West Harrison, New York. The suit, brought on behalf of a class of women aged 18 to 25, claims that not allowing women to register for the draft based on their gender violates their equal protection rights and the substantive due process right of association under the Fifth Amendment. The suit claims the gender-based policy results in certain positions being closed to women who enlist in the military.

In August 2019, Den Hollander and Daher filed a motion for class certification, but in September 2019, a new team of lawyers from Boies Schiller Flexner took over for the plaintiff.

Daher did not return a call about the case. Another attorney working with Den Hollander and Daher on the case, Cara Marie DiBiase of West Orange, said her team is no longer representing the plaintiff, but she declined to discuss the reasons.

U.S. District Judge Esther Salas. Photo by Carmen Natale

A hearing on the plaintiffs' motion for class certification was scheduled for June 25, but Salas canceled the hearing "due to unforeseen circumstances" on June 18 and said she would issue a ruling on the papers in due course.

The New York Times reported that Salas previously told a neighbor that being a public figure could make her a target. "She had some high-profile cases, and she was always a little concerned," the neighbor told the Times.

On July 16, a shareholder class action case was assigned to Salas accusing Deutsche Bank of failing to properly monitor customers that were considered high risk, including disgraced financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. The case came shortly after Deutsche Bank was fined $150 million in a settlement with New York state regulators, who accused the bank of processing millions of dollars worth of suspicious payments from accounts belonging to Epstein.

In 2014, Salas sentenced reality TV star Teresa Giudice of "Real Housewives of New Jersey" to 46 months in jail and the star's husband, Joe Giudice, to 41 months, for tax evasion charges.

A law enforcement source, who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to speak, said the U.S. Marshals Service had guarded Salas' home for a time while she was hearing the Giudice case. But it was merely as a precaution and not in response to a specific threat, that person said.

David Lat, a former assistant U.S. attorney in the District of New Jersey who served as a prosecutor while Salas was a federal public defender, called Salas a "highly respected and beloved member of the bar before taking the bench."

Before the authorities linked the shooting to Den Hollander, Lat, founder of the legal blog Above the Law, and now a legal recruiter, said: "My suspicion is that this horrific attack is related to Judge Salas' work. She is by all accounts a wonderful person, not someone with many personal enemies."

Attorney General William Barr said in a statement about the shooting Monday, "On behalf of the entire Justice Department, I send my deepest condolences to Judge Salas and her family on the death of their son and wish her husband a swift and complete recovery. This kind of lawless, evil action carried out against a member of the federal judiciary will not be tolerated, and I have ordered the full resources of the FBI and U.S. Marshals Service to investigate the matter."