Patrick J. Fitzgerald (born December 22, 1960) is the current United States Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois and a member of the U.S. Department of Justice Office of Special Counsel. He was the federal prosecutor in charge of the investigation of the Valerie Plame Affair, which led to the prosecution and conviction of Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff Scooter Libby. He has been involved in a number of other high-profile cases, pursuing Illinois Governor George Ryan, media mogul Conrad Black, several aides to Chicago Mayor Richard Daley in the Hired Truck Program, and Chicago detective and torturer Jon Burge. His office is currently investigating an alleged conspiracy to sell Barack Obama's vacated U.S. Senate seat to the highest bidder which led to the arrest of Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich on December 9, 2008 on corruption charges.

Fitzgerald was born into an Irish-American Catholic family in the New York City borough of Brooklyn, growing up in the Midwood-Flatbush neighborhood. His father (also Patrick Fitzgerald) worked as a doorman in Manhattan.

Fitzgerald attended Our Lady of Help Christian's grammar school,before going on to Regis High School, a prestigious Jesuit Catholic school in Manhattan, and received degrees in economics and mathematics from Amherst College before receiving his JD from Harvard Law School in 1985. While at Harvard, Fitzgerald was a member of the Harvard Business School Rugby Club.