Governor Gets Help From Lawyer of Spitzer’s

Gov. David A. Paterson has sought the help of a veteran lawyer with a decent track record when it comes to helping someone in that office.

The lawyer, Theodore V. Wells Jr., was on the defense team that persuaded federal prosecutors not to charge Gov. Eliot Spitzer when he was under investigation in 2008 for patronizing a prostitution ring.

Inside the courtroom, Mr. Wells has a reputation as a gifted orator with a folksy appeal, his adversaries say.

“He understands people, and I think he knows the emotional and intellectual buttons to push,” said Mary Jo White, the former United States attorney in Manhattan whose prosecutors faced him in the courtroom and in pre-indictment discussions in which he would try to persuade them not to proceed with a case.

He knew, whether in making a pitch to jurors or prosecutors, what would be persuasive, she said. “He can show frustration, anger at the same kinds of things that his audience would.”

Christine Chung, a former assistant United States attorney who prosecuted an insurance fraud case against a Manhattan gynecologist defended by Mr. Wells, recalled the trial ending in a hung jury. “Especially when he only needs to win over 1 of 12 jurors, he is devastating,” she said.

Mr. Wells, 59, is a partner and co-chairman of the litigation department at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, a Manhattan law firm prominent for its white-collar criminal defense work.

His other high-profile clients over the years have included I. Lewis Libby Jr. in his Washington trial in the C.I.A. leak case and the former labor secretary Raymond J. Donovan when he was acquitted on fraud charges in the Bronx in the 1980s.

Mr. Wells also helped defend Robert G. Torricelli, the former United States senator from New Jersey, in a criminal investigation that Ms. White’s office ended in early 2002 without filing charges.

Mr. Wells suffered a legal defeat last summer when his client, American International Group, lost a civil trial against a firm controlled by Maurice R. Greenberg, A.I.G.’s former chief executive.

Mr. Wells and his wife, Nina Mitchell Wells, who was New Jersey’s secretary of state under Gov. Jon S. Corzine, live in Livingston, N.J. A spokeswoman for Mr. Wells’s firm had no comment.