The Man Who Survived Bridgegate: Bill Baroni’s Journey from Politics to Prison and Beyond
Sometimes the worst thing that can happen to you becomes the doorway to discovering who you’re meant to be.
I’ve had the privilege of sitting down with some incredible people on this podcast, but Bill Baroni’s story stopped me in my tracks. Here’s a guy who went from the highest levels of New Jersey politics—state legislature, state senate, appointed by Governor Chris Christie to run the largest transportation agency in the country—to federal prison. And then, in a twist that sounds like fiction, the Supreme Court of the United States threw out his conviction while he was behind bars.
But this isn’t a story about vindication. It’s about what happens when your worst nightmare becomes your reality, and how you find the strength not just to survive, but to use that pain to help others.
From Bridgegate Headlines to Federal Prison
Bill didn’t just live through a political scandal—he lived through it in the most public way possible. Bridgegate dominated headlines for years. Lane closures on the George Washington Bridge. Federal investigations. Convictions that went all the way to the Supreme Court.
“I remember getting up one morning,” Bill told me. “I was there on the front page of the New York Post—picture of me and the word ‘cover up.’ I had my Duke basketball hat on and I lowered it just a little bit. I walked over to the gym, got on the elliptical machine, I looked up on the TVs above the elliptical machine. And there I was.”
Imagine having nowhere to hide from your nightmare. Most of us get to suffer privately. Bill’s suffering was appointment television. 90% of the people in his life disappeared overnight. But here’s what struck me most about our conversation—he understood why some had to leave. Many were potential witnesses. Others? They just ran.
The Supreme Court Call That Changed Everything
Picture this: You’re in federal prison, sentenced to 18 months, doing your time with a one-in-ten-thousand chance the Supreme Court will even look at your case. You’ve accepted your reality. You’re working out five hours a day, teaching GED classes, keeping your head down.
Then the phone call comes.
Bill had arranged for his friend Sue to check the Supreme Court’s website at 9:30 AM and tell him the bad news at 9:40. When he called Sue, she was upset on the phone. He assumed the worst.
“She said, ‘No, they took the case.’ I was like, ‘No Sue, they didn’t take the case.’ She said, ‘No, they did.’ I said, ‘Sue, why don’t you read me exactly what it says?’ And I start—Oh my God! Oh my God! Oh my God!”
His friend Cephas, a big guy from Philadelphia working out nearby, looked down and asked if he was all right. That weekend, his parents drove over for what became the most joyful visit of his incarceration. Three days later, Bill walked out of Loretto Federal Prison a free man.
The DMV Angel and the Power of Grace
But the moment that really got to me—the one that had me fighting back tears in my studio—happened after Bill got out. He needed to replace his driver’s license. All he had was an expired license and an expired passport with a hole in it.
At the DMV, the woman behind the counter said she couldn’t accept those documents. Then she looked up. On her desk was a copy of The Trentonian with Bill’s picture on the front page.
What happened next is why I do this podcast.
The woman smiled and asked for a credit card instead. She started typing. “I’m from Hamilton too,” she said. “I always voted for you. I know you from Saint Gregory’s Church. Everybody around here knows what happened, and I’m so happy for you.”
Then she did something that broke Bill completely: “Can I come give you a hug?”
“This woman who I’ve never met gets up in the middle of the DMV, walks out to the main floor, and gives me this big hug,” Bill remembered. “At this point, I’m doing everything I can not to break down in tears.”
He made it to the parking lot before he lost it completely. All the emotions from years of investigation, trial, prison, and now freedom came pouring out in a Motor Vehicle Commission parking lot in New Jersey.
Teaching Tomorrow’s Lawyers About Real Justice
Today, Bill teaches prison law at Seton Hall University. He’s educating the next generation of lawyers, judges, and prosecutors about the part of criminal justice nobody talks about—what happens after the cell door closes.
“Criminal justice law doesn’t stop when Bill shows up at Loretto,” he told me. “It stops at the end when everything is done.”
His course covers the journey from jail to home—the part most law schools ignore. These aren’t just academic exercises. These are future US attorneys learning about the system they’ll be putting people through. Future legislators who might actually understand what incarceration means. Future judges who’ll see the human beings in front of their bench.
Bill’s message to anyone going through their own nightmare—whether it’s prison, illness, job loss, or any of the prisons we build in our own minds—is simple but profound: “Take what you suffered and make somebody else’s nightmare just a little bit less bad.”
Hear the full story: