Nigel Sweeney
Sir Nigel Hamilton Sweeney, styled The Hon. Mr Justice Sweeney, is a High Court judge.
Sweeney studied law at the University of Nottingham under Sir John Cyril Smith. He was called to the bar in 1976 at the Middle Temple, where he was made a bencher in 1997, and was appointed Queen's Counsel in 2000. He was appointed to the High Court in September 2008.
Prior to being appointed a High Court judge, Sweeney was a barrister in the United Kingdom, practising from 6 King's Bench Walk. He prosecuted a number of notable criminal trials, including the perpetrators of the 1984 IRA Brighton bombing and the attempted bombings of 21 July 2005, Neo-Nazi terrorist David Copeland and murderers Michael Stone and Kamel Bourgass.
He presided over the trial in February and March 2013 of former Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change Chris Huhne MP and his former wife, Vicky Pryce, for perverting the course of justice contrary to common law. He sentenced another MP Denis MacShane for fraud in the aftermath of the 2009 parliamentary expenses scandal.
More recently he presided over and was sentencing judge in high-profile cases involving terrorists and extremists, such as the two men responsible for the murder of Lee Rigby in 2013 and White supremacist bomber Pavlo Lapshyn. He was the presiding judge in the trial of Rolf Harris for various counts of indecent assault dating back to the 1960s.
