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"Suing the U.S. Attorney is not fun,” says April's guest on The Legal Impact. But Charles McIntyre, executive director of the New Hampshire Lottery and Gaming Commission, convinced the N.H. governor that it needed to be done, and, in 2019, the Commission filed its lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Justice.  

The case concerned the Justice Department’s extension of the Wire Act, a federal statute that regulates sports-related betting, to cover all types of gambling, threatening the legality of all forms of online betting.   

“I had to talk to the governor and the attorney general and say, ‘We need to sue the Justice Department.’ And they said, ‘What? The U.S. Justice Department?’ I said, ‘Yes, we need to sue them,’”  McIntyre said.  “So, we sued the Justice Department, and we prevailed.”  

In a wide-ranging interview, McIntyre recounted this and many other stories from his long career in gaming law and regulation. McIntyre will be commencement speaker at the 2026 UNH Franklin Pierce ����ֱ�� graduation ceremony. 

McIntyre earned his JD from Suffolk University Law School in Massachusetts. His early legal positions included serving as a senior prosecutor for the Norfolk District Attorney, where he focused on organized crime, and then as General Counsel for the Massachusetts Lottery.  

"When it comes to dealing with problem gambling, I think you try and make it as safe as you can"

During his more than 15 years overseeing New Hampshire’s gambling industry, he says, “We went from the Flintstones to the Jetsons. Now we do full-fledged gaming. There are 14 casinos we now regulate. You can now do sports betting both in person as well as on your app or on a website. You can play our games through our app or website. You can bet on horse racing now through your phone. It is the full gamut of gambling.”  

McIntyre gained some insight into the world of gambling years ago in Norfolk County as a prosecutor of organized crime consortiums involved in illegal sports betting.  The job involved undercover work and wiretapping, and, he says, helped him develop a thick skin, which has come in handy at times when dealing with lawmakers and courts on gambling matters.   

As gambling has grown into a thriving industry, challenges include finding ways to regulate it – keeping it above board and also dealing with the problem of gambling addiction.  

“Various forms of gambling call for different types of regulations,” he said.  “In some states there are different commissions for different types of gambling. In New Hampshire, it’s all under one umbrella,” he said. “It’s typical risk management; the lighter the gambling, the lesser the regulatory structure, and the more serious the gaming, the heavier our construction of regulations is.”  

Gambling has deep historical roots in New Hampshire and in the U.S., he said. There were lotteries held to fund the Revolutionary Army and to build bridges and schools in early America. “And then Dartmouth College was funded by lotteries. From 1795 to 1810, the state of New Hampshire had, I think, 14 separate raffle drawings to fund Dartmouth College for Indians in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.”   

When it comes to dealing with problem gambling, he said, “I think you try and make it as safe as you can,” he said. “I grew up in gambling. I grew up setting up tables in Bingo in the parochial school I went to and my family owned part of a racetrack as a kid,” he said. “It’s about putting up as many guardrails as you can that are reasonable and prudent.”     

In New Hampshire, for instance, he said, gambling on credit is prohibited, and gambling on any college game played in New Hampshire and any game involving a New Hampshire-based college team is forbidden.  “Also, because we have a single operator, we don’t have the massive amounts of advertising other states have, and we also agreed there would be no advertising on college campuses,” he said.  “But certainly I’m open to every suggestion, and if there were problems, I’d address them as they come up.”   

For more on Charles McIntyre’s experiences in the legal and regulatory world of gaming, how gambling has evolved in New Hampshire, including the role of charitable gambling in funding nonprofits, listen to the full interview.