From 1981 to 1996, Professor Fitzgerald was a member of the IBM Law Department and held a variety of positions at locations in the United States and abroad. This included serving as counsel to IBM's Export Regulation Office in Washington, D.C., with responsibility for the company's worldwide export policy, licensing, and compliance operations. In addition to his other duties in this role, Fitzgerald helped develop training programs and conducted workshops on the regulation of international trade for multinational audiences in thirteen countries on five continents. He also managed the legal office of an IBM Federal Systems Division manufacturing and development facility, served as a competition law specialist at IBM's European Headquarters in Paris, supported regional sales and marketing operations based in Maryland and Georgia, and was a member of the litigation staff at IBM's Corporate Headquarters in Armonk, New York.

After graduating from law school, Professor Fitzgerald was a law clerk for the Honorable Patrick E. Higginbotham, who was then a U.S. District Court Judge for the Northern District of Texas. He conducted post-graduate research in comparative law at the London School of Economics & Political Science, and earned his LL.M. in European Legal Studies at the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom in 1981. Prior to coming to Stetson, Professor Fitzgerald was also a member of the adjunct faculty of the George Washington University Law School, where he taught International Business Transactions.

Fitzgerald is a member of the New York, Texas, and U.S. Supreme Court Bars.

Professor Fitzgerald earned his B.A. in Economics from the College of William & Mary in 1973 and his J.D. from the University of California, Hastings College of the Law in 1976, where he served on the editorial board of the Hastings Constitutional Law Quarterly.

He is a member of the Executive Council of the International Law Section of the Florida Bar. Fitzgerald is also a Director of the American Society of Comparative Law and serves on the International Advisory Board of SanctionsWatch.Com and the Advisory Board of the BNA/ACCA Corporate Compliance Manual.

Professor Fitzgerald writes and speaks widely on international trade and technology matters, and received Stetson University’s Homer and Dolly Hand Award for Excellence in Faculty Scholarship in 2001. He has appeared before the Congressionally-created Judicial Review Commission on Foreign Assets Control, the Cambridge University International Symposium on Economic Crime, the International Bar Association, and the Organization of Commonwealth Caribbean Bar Associations.

Professor Fitzgerald was also appointed to the NAFTA Chapter 19 Bi-National Dispute Panel Roster by the U.S. Trade Representative to hear cases involving anti-dumping and countervailing duty disputes among Canada, Mexico and the United States, and participated in the review of the Canadian dumping determination in the Certain Household Appliances Case, CDA-USA-2000-1904-03. He is a member of the NAFTA Panel currently considering the Oil Country Tubular Goods Case, USA-MEX-2001-1904-05. Additionally, the Swedish Foreign Ministry included Professor Fitzgerald as the only non-European participant in its Ad Hoc Working Group on Targeted Financial Sanctions, which was formed as an outgrowth of the ongoing intergovernmental "Stockholm Process" aimed at improving the operation of the U.N. Sanctions Committees. The Working Group's findings are published as the Swedish Institute of International Law's Report to the Swedish Foreign Office on Legal Safeguards and Targeted Sanctions.