Plan for the Future
James D. McConnell, Jr. of Mountain Lakes, New Jersey, died on December 26, 2022 after a long and courageous battle with cancer.
Jim was born in North Arlington, NJ. He grew up on the Jersey Shore and graduated from Wall High School in 1978.
He attended the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana and graduated in 1983 with a B.A. in English.
Between 1982 to 1988, Jim served as an Airborne and Ranger qualified Infantry officer in the United States Army in locations throughout the United States, including Fort Richardson, Alaska.
In 1988, he was honorably discharged from the Army at the rank of Captain and enrolled in Rutgers Law School. Upon his graduation, Jim began a nearly thirty-year career as an attorney in New York City. He was a partner in the law firm of Hargraves, McConnell & Costigan, P.C., where he practiced from 1998 until 2017, when he joined Freeborn & Peters, LLP as Senior Counsel.
Jim was a musician and lifelong lover of music, an avid reader, and a compelling writer with an extraordinary breadth of knowledge. He recognized and appreciated any well-made thing from a sentence to a sculpture to an operating system. He was open to everyone that he met, and his magnetic personality, wit and laughter brightened any room.
Above all else, Jim cherished his relationships with family and friends. He was a loving and devoted husband, father, son, brother and uncle. He is survived by his beautiful wife, Jewel, his children, Oliver and Kathryn, his parents, James and Regina, his brother John and wife Francesca, brother Michael, sister Margaret Mary, nephews Matthew and Michael, sister-in-law Susan and husband Butch, brother-in-law Butch and wife Edyle, brother-in-law Ricky and wife Riza, sister-in-law Vicky and husband Joey, brother-in-law Mel and wife Cecille, and his other nieces and nephews.
