City Councilman Dennis P. Gallagher submitted yesterday to a DNA test by investigators looking into allegations that he raped a woman at his district office in Queens on Sunday, his lawyer said.
City Councilman Dennis P. Gallagher of Queens in 2004.
The lawyer, Stephen R. Mahler, said the police took saliva swabs from Mr. Gallagher at Mr. Mahler’s office in Kew Gardens. He declined to comment on the woman’s account but said his client had done nothing wrong. Mr. Gallagher has not been charged with a crime.
On Monday the police searched Mr. Gallagher’s district headquarters at 78-25 Metropolitan Avenue in Middle Village. A law enforcement official, speaking on condition of anonymity because the investigation was continuing, said Mr. Gallagher and the woman had been drinking at a nearby bar on Sunday before she went with him to his office. The woman told investigators that he raped her there, the official said.
The Queens district attorney’s office, which is investigating the case, declined to comment yesterday.
Mr. Gallagher, 43, is one of three Republican members of the 51-member Council, where he has served since his election in 2001. In interviews yesterday, several council members described Mr. Gallagher as a doting father of two sons, a dedicated youth basketball coach and a conscientious legislator.
“I’ve known this man for 15 years,” said City Councilman James S. Oddo of Staten Island, the Republican leader of the Council. “I know him to be a council member who is involved in the minutiae of every issue in his district. Very active, very engaged, very responsive. And I think that’s the reputation he has in the district.”
But he has critics in his district. “I would say that he is not fit for public office and probably never was,” said Robert F. Holden, the president of Juniper Park Civic Association, who has been bitterly feuding with Mr. Gallagher for some time over a number of issues in the district. “He is known for dominating people.”
Mr. Gallagher represents a largely residential, moderate- to conservative-voting district in Queens. It includes Middle Village, Glendale, Ridgewood and parts of Richmond Hill and Woodhaven.
For a decade, Mr. Gallagher worked as chief of staff to Thomas V. Ognibene, who represented the 30th Council District before Mr. Gallagher was elected to the seat. Mr. Ognibene was the Council’s Republican leader before term limits barred him from running for re-election to his Council seat. Before that, Mr. Gallagher was executive assistant to State Senator Serphin R. Maltese, the Queens Republican leader.
Mr. Gallagher was at Mr. Ognibene’s side during a tense battle in 1996, when Mr. Ognibene wrested the Queens Republican Party leadership from Frances M. Werner and led the campaign that installed Joseph M. DeFronzo, a wine importer and an aide to Senator Maltese, as the new county leader. Mr. Maltese later became the county leader.
While Mr. Gallagher worked for him, Mr. Ognibene was investigated amid allegations that he had accepted gifts from a building industry consultant. During that investigation, prosecutors also reviewed the work of a company partly run by Mr. Gallagher that sold collectibles on the Internet out of the fourth floor of a local parochial school. Part of the business was the sale of magazines including Playboy and Penthouse, which were wrapped in plastic and intended only as collectibles, Mr. Ognibene said at the time.
The space was rented to the company to help keep the school financially afloat, and the school forced out Mr. Gallagher’s company once it learned about the sale of the magazines, officials said. No charges were brought against Mr. Ognibene or Mr. Gallagher as a result of that investigation.
In an interview yesterday, Mr. Ognibene said that voters in the district and other New Yorkers should wait for the facts to be settled before coming to conclusions about the allegations against Mr. Gallagher.
“Just remember the situation at Duke,” Mr. Ognibene said, referring to recent events at Duke University, where three former lacrosse players were falsely accused of sexual assault by a woman hired to strip at a team party.
Mr. Ognibene said that he spoke with the councilman yesterday and that “he’s doing as well as you would expect anyone to be doing under the circumstances.”
“I’ve known Dennis for the last 25 years, and the allegations are in no way consistent with anything I’ve known of him in the past,” Mr. Ognibene said. “I don’t even know how to address this issue. Maybe this is just an angry woman. Maybe she sees something at the end of the tunnel because he’s a councilman.”
The City Council speaker, Christine C. Quinn, has declined to comment on the allegations while the investigation is continuing. Her spokeswoman, Maria Alvarado, said the speaker would take appropriate actions as they become necessary, pending the police investigation.
