John F. Russo (July 11, 1933 – August 12, 2017) was an American attorney and Democratic Party politician from New Jersey, who served in the New Jersey Senate from 1974 to 1992 and was Senate President.

A resident of Toms River, New Jersey, Russo was born in Asbury Park, where he attended Asbury Park High School. He was a 1955 graduate of the University of Notre Dame and received a law degree from Columbia Law School in 1958.^[1]

He served for nine years as an assistant prosecutor in Ocean County, and was first elected to the State Senate in 1973.^[2]

In the Senate, Russo served on the Joint Committee on Appropriations and a Special Sub-Committee on Tax Reform and was the chair of the Committee on Energy, Agriculture and Environment and the Senate Judiciary Committee. In 1982, he wrote a bill reinstating capital punishment in New Jersey.^[3] Russo served as Senate President from 1986 to 1990.^[4]

Russo ran for the Democratic Party nomination for Governor of New Jersey in 1985, placing second behind nominee Peter Shapiro, who was in turn soundly defeated by Thomas Kean in the general election.^[2]

Following his retirement from the Senate, Russo was a partner at the Princeton Public Affairs Group.^[4] In 2007, while a bill was proposed that would abolish capital punishment in the state, he sat on the Death Penalty Study Commission and testified against passage of the bill.

Russo died on August 12, 2017, of esophageal cancer at the age of 84.^[3]