NAFUSA Secretary Matthew D. Orwig, shown right, has joined the Dallas office of Jones Day. Orwig becomes the third Jones Day partner to serve on the NAFUSA board. NAFUSA President Richard H. Deane, Jr., shown at bottom, is a partner in the Atlanta office and board member Karen P. Hewitt, shown in middle photo, a partner in the San Diego office.

Jones Day is a global law firm practicing in the major centers of business and finance throughout the world. The firm has had a presence in Texas for over 30 years and has more than 200 lawyers in Dallas and Houston.

Orwig has served three presidents and five attorneys general in the Department of Justice. He served as U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Texas from 2001 to 2007. He is a graduate of Texas Tech University School of Law.

As reported in The Greenville News on January 25, 2012, long time NAFUSA member Johnnie “Mac” Walters was honored in January, when he was among 150 World War II veterans who received a Legion of Honor award from the nation of France. Walters, 92, flew as a navigator on crews that made 53 combat missions in the European theatre of the war. The award was created by Napoleon in 1802 “to acknowledge services rendered to France by persons of great merit.”

Walters served as Assistant Attorney General for the Tax Division in the Nixon Administration (1969-1971) and as Commissioner of Internal Revenue (1971-1973). As reported in the September 2011 NAFUSA newsletter, Walters recently published his memoirs, Our Journey, describing his distinguished career. Walters is retired and lives in Greenville, South Carolina, with Donna, his wife of 63 years.

Thomas O’Brien, a NAFUSA member who served as the United States Attorney for the Central District of California, has been retained to represent a chemistry professor at the University of California at Los Angeles who faces three felony charges of criminal negligence following a student’s death in a lab accident. The student was transferring t-butyl lithium in the UCLA chemistry lab when a plastic syringe broke, causing the chemical to burst into flames and leading to the student’s death.

“This is a terrible tragedy, and we greatly dispute the allegations that the conduct…amounts to a crime,” O’Brien told The National Law Journal.

O’Brien is a partner in the Los Angeles office of Paul Hastings.

The recent news of Gov. Haley Barbour of Mississippi granting pardons or early release to more than 200 inmates led to a guest column in the Memphis newspaper, The Commercial Appeal. On January 14, 2012, in Guest column: Power of the pardon remains explosive, Keel Hunt writes of an effort 33 years ago by then governor Ray Blanton of Tennessee to issue 52 executive clemencies, including a pardon for the son of a political friend. Less than 48 hours later Blanton was out of office, stripped of his power in what amounted to a bipartisan “coup”, led by then U.S. Attorney Hal Hardin, shown above, long time NAFUSA member.

NAFUSA member Peter Vaira, left,  published a thoughtful review of the new book Federal Criminal Discovery by Robert M. Crary, Craig D. Singer and Simon A. Latcovich, all partners at Williams & Connolly. Vaira’s review, A New Resource For Criminal Discovery [MS Word file], was published in The Legal Intelligencer, January 10, 2012.

NAFUSA member Robert N. Miller served as United States Attorney for the District of Colorado from 1981-1988, after having served as District Attorney in Greeley, Colorado for ten years. Miller is now a partner in the Denver office of Perkins Coie, where he practices complex commercial litigation and white collar criminal law.

This summer Miller published an article in the ABA magazine Litigation entitled “Balancing the Duty to Prosecute and the Obligation to Do Justice”.  He draws upon several of the cases in which he was involved as U.S. Attorney.