Almost, Twenty years ago, Hakeem Jeffries was a CBS lawyer. Hot on the heels (well, I’m writing this in May, but let’s pretend) of his work battling a lawsuit against the network after Janet Jackson suffered her infamous “wardrobe malfunction” during the 2004 Super Bowl halftime show, he was profiled for Crain’s New York Business. The magazine wondered aloud about his political future — including a likely run for a state Assembly seat in Brooklyn. “Winning would represent a huge pay cut, and the arduous commute to dreary Albany,” the article observed, but Jeffries was undeterred. “There’s sacrifice in public service,” he told Crain’s.
His 2006 victory finally got him a seat for which he’d run twice before, and a state legislator’s salary of $79,500 launched what is now an estimated career in politics, leading House Democrats while the government is shut down. And though he certainly gave up millions in lifetime earnings as a corporate lawyer, Jeffries has no material worries, with homes in Brooklyn and Washington D.C., two pensions and plenty of money left over after getting his kids through college.
Add it all up and Forbes puts Jeffries’s net worth at around $2 million. That’s more than his Républican counterpart, the House speaker Mike Johnson whose fortune Forbes valued at $350,000 last year; but less than the Senate leadership duo of Republican John Thune and Democrat (and fellow Brooklynite) Chuck Schumer who between them are worth a combined sum of $7 million.
Jeffries’s parents were both public service workers, his father a substance abuse counselor for the state of New York and his mother a social worker who served in the Army. Their prospective politician son was born in 1970, their native Brooklyn, and Jeffries was raised in Crown Heights until 1988 when he went off to upstate New York to study political science at Binghamton University. He graduated in 1992 and tacked on two more degrees: a master’s in public policy from Georgetown University in 1994 and a law degree from New York University in 1997.
In that same year, he married Kennisandra Arciniegas, who is said to have been introduced to him at Binghamton; she is now employed by a legal services organization. The couple had two sons in quick succession.
After serving as a clerk for a federal judge in the Southern District of New York, Jeffries joined Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton and Garrison — a white shoe New York law firm (that got some attention recently when it earned Donald Trump’s ire before then agreeing to provide this administration with $40 million worth of pro bono legal services).
But he also flirted with politics, making a run for state assembly in New York in 2000 from a Brooklyn district. He was defeated in the Democratic primary, losing to Roger Green, a two-decade incumbent, by 18 points. When he looked into running again in 2002, Jeffries learned his apartment had been drawn out of Green’s district by just a few blocks, according to a 2023 profile. “The redrawing of the lines was a more genteel version of a rock through your window,” Errol Louis, another political aspirant at the time, told Politico.
No matter. Jeffries remained at Paul Weiss, and transferred to litigation for Viacom and CBS. He sold the apartment that had already been drawn out of the 57th district for $506,000 in December 2005 and then apparently moved a few blocks—since he ran again and won the seat back in 2006, this time in an open primary.
Jeffries established roots in the district in a more permanent way in 2007, when he and his then-girlfriend (now wife) bought a three-bedroom apartment in Prospect Heights for $559,000 that they still call home. They paid about $425,000 to do this at the time. They have repeatedly taken out equity on the home and Forbes estimates that they owe at least that amount on it today — but the value of the apartment has also skyrocketed, now worth an estimated $1.6 million pre-debt.
The recently minted politician also added to his income with work for a personal injury firm called Godosky and Gentile, about $116,000 in 2011 and $60,000 in 2012. His climb up the political ladder was lucrative too: in 2012, he won a seat in the House of Representatives that more than doubled his paycheck to $174,000. By the time he arrived in Congress, most of his and his wife’s savings were in retirement accounts and life insurance policies though he did report a credit union account owned by his wife worth between $15,000 and $50,000.
2015 was a lucrative year: Jeffries left Godosky and Gentile when he went to Washington, but retained stakes in cases he worked on, and his 2015 disclosures report $1.6 million in total payouts that year. He directed between $100,000 and $200,000 into two 529 college savings accounts, bought a handful of exchange-traded funds and parked some of it in cash or money-market accounts. He purchased an apartment in D.C.‘s emerging Navy Yard neighborhood in 2017 for $325,000. It is worth some $500,000 today before an estimated $350,000 or so of debt.
His political ascent continued apace. Jeffries became the Democrats’ caucus chair in 2019 and was named a manager during Donald Trump’s first impeachment in 2020, assisting in arguing the House majority’s case before the Senate, which ultimately acquitted the president. In 2023, Jeffries replaced outgoing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi as Democratic leader, presiding over a remade GOP-run House (and getting a bump in salary, to $193,400.)
In recent years, Jeffries’ finances have been all about paying for his children’s college. In 2019, when Jeffries’ first son attended Binghamton like his dad, then transferred to Boston University in 2020, the cost of attendance was about $78,000 a year; it stands around $90,000 annually there today. He is now a law student. (It remains unclear where Jeffries’ youngest son attended school.)
Beginning in 2019, Jeffries says he sees an increase in sales of the securities held in their 529 accounts. They were practically empty by the time of his latest disclosure at the end of 2024. The couple’s investment portfolio also seems to have dwindled, with between $280,000 and $880,000 in liquid assets now — compared to a range of $440,000 and $1.2 million in 2018.
They also borrowed against their New York apartment with a home equity line of credit in 2022. The stated loan range increased from “$15,000 to $50,000” in 2022 and in 2023 to “$100,000 to $250,000” in 2024. Finally, one of Jeffries’ biggest liabilities on his disclosure other than debt for real estate is a student loan he took for $15,000-$50,000 in August 2024. His office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Forbes’s valuation or his recent financial maneuvers.
Jeffries won’t be facing any more huge legal settlements, at least while in office, but the 55-year-old still has a bright financial future. If Democrats reclaim the House of Representatives in 2026, Jeffries is all but certain to be their pick for speaker, which would increase his pay to $223,500.
That, along with a few extra years in Congress serving in his safe blue-seat district, would increase the value of his pension (he could start collecting at age 62) as well. And to add insult to injury, former House speakers also tend to land on their feet pretty well — see Paul Ryan, who took a job on the Fox Corporation board in 2019 and brings down three hundred fifty thousand-plus dollars a year. Source
