Regina Egea

Regina Egea was the Chief of Staff to the Governor of New Jersey, Chris Christie. She was appointed in December 2013 and resigned in April 2016.

Egea is a native of Monmouth County. She graduated from Montclair State University and holds a master’s in Business Administration in Marketing from Fordham University and from the International Executive Program at the International Institute for Management Development. Egea was a Senior VP of AT&T.

From 2003 until 2008, Egea was on the Harding Township, New Jersey Board of Education. While on the Board, she successfully conducted a search for School Superintendent in 2007. In 2008 she was elected to the position of Committee Member in Harding Township (the only female member) and was Deputy Mayor from 2010-2011.

In 2009, Egea became a policy adviser to the 2009 Christie campaign for governor. She became Chief of Staff to the State Treasurer Andrew Sidamon-Eristoff. In 2012, Egea became a member of Board of Trustees of the North Jersey Transportation Planning Authority. Egea became Director of the Authorities Unit of the Governor's Office. In December 2013, Christie chose her as chief of staff to replace Kevin O'Dowd, whom he nominated to be the new state Attorney-General.

She supported the Jersey Battered Women’s Shelter in 2013 and is a current member of the Board of Trustees of the Harding Kemmerer Library. She sat on the Harding Township Board of Education of from 2004 to 2008.

Egea became the subject of increasing media scrutiny in January 2014. and is one of several New Jersey state employees within the governor's office who was subpoenaed by the New Jersey Legislature panel investigating the Fort Lee lane closure scandal. Egea, who had learned of the lane closures on September 13, 2013 after their reversal and later assisted Bill Baroni (former Deputy Executive Director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey) prepare for his testimony for the same committee, was not accused of wrongdoing. She testified on July 17, 2014. Egea testified that she had contact with the governor about the matter and had deleted numerous telephone text messages regarding it but could not recall when she done so. Phone records subpoenaed from AT&T show that there were 12 more texts sent between Egea and Christie. An interim report by the legislative says the governor's office could not provide the content of any of the nine sent by Egea and three by the governor. The content of the calls remains controversial in trials related to the lane closures. As of June 2016, the whereabouts of Christie's actual phone are unknown according to attorneys who said they returned it to the government. In a June 2016 ruling a federal judge said that subpoena request for the phone were too broad. The hearing did not clarify its whereabouts.