Eileen Powers has spent her entire career in the law — as a prosecutor, defense attorney, civil litigator, municipal attorney, and, for the past eight years, as Southold Town Justice. A graduate of Stony Brook University, where she studied American history and English, she went on to earn her law degree cum laude from St. John's University School of Law. She has been a practicing attorney for more than 30 years.

Early in her career, Eileen joined the Suffolk County District Attorney's Office, where she rose to become Deputy Chief of the Major Crimes Bureau and a leading trial attorney. She prosecuted hundreds of cases — including robbery, vehicular manslaughter, and homicide — and tried high-profile matters before Suffolk County juries, among them the Farmingville day laborer cases. She later worked as a defense attorney, representing individuals charged with serious crimes, and built extensive experience as a civil litigator and municipal attorney, serving as Town Attorney for Southampton and providing legal counsel to municipalities across the region. Since 2001, she has operated her own private practice in Riverhead, with a focus on litigation.

Eileen has served as Southold Town Justice since 2018. In that role she oversees thousands of matters each year — traffic and penal law violations, parking and code enforcement, landlord-tenant cases, and civil and small claims actions. In 2024 alone, her court processed more than 3,200 cases and collected over $570,000 in fines and fees. She has modernized court operations, implementing virtual arraignments that reduce strain on defendants and streamline proceedings. She also sits as a judge on the East End Regional Intervention Court, a treatment court serving the five East End towns that handles cases involving nonviolent offenders with substance use issues. Beyond the bench, she has served as President of the Suffolk County Magistrates Association.

Eileen lives in Southold with her husband Larry Tuthill, a supervising attorney at Legal Services of Long Island whose work focuses on domestic violence survivors. They have three children.