On Friday, May 24 this year, Attorney General Merrick Garland delivered
remarks at a Memorial Event in honor of Stephen J. Pollak. The gathering in the
Department of Justice’s (DOJ) Great Hall honored Pollack who died in
February at the age of 95. Pollak led the Department’s Civil Rights Division
(Division) from 1965 to 1967 and was a key player in many of the cases and
events that marked the civil rights movement in the 1960s and 70s.

On his first day working in the Division, Pollak was deployed to Selma,
Alabama to ensure that state and local officials complied with a federal court
order permitting demonstrators to proceed to the state capital in Montgomery.
The march has been described as a catalyst for passage of the Voting Rights
Act of 1965 in which Pollak played a central role, helping to negotiate the final
draft bill of the federal civil rights law.

He also worked with then Attorney General Robert Kennedy to ensure that
James Meredith was allowed to enroll at the University of Mississippi. He later
served as an Advisor to President Lyndon Johnson and an Assistant to
Solicitor General Archibald Cox. He also served as counsel on President
Johnson’s War on Poverty and drafted the legislation creating the Volunteers in
Service to Amera (VISTA) program. Later, in private practice, he argued 13
cases before the Supreme Court, including cases on behalf of students with
disabilities and a case challenging school desegregation in Charlotte, North
Carolina, Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, 402 U.S.
1(1971).

At the Memorial ceremony in May, Attorney General Garland recalled Pollak
speaking at the Civil Rights Division’s 65th Anniversary celebration in
December 2022. In response to accolades for the work he did, Pollack
responded. “I did not do it alone, I served with great people in the Division…
All of you who are serving now or have served, I commend you and commend
your tasks. These are great laws that you are enforcing, and they need
everything that you can give them.” Garland praised Pollak’s extraordinary
service to the DOJ and to the cause of civil rights, saying “it helped ensure
that the government in which he served was in fact a force for good.”

Judge Robert J. Conrad (Bob) has been appointed as the Director of the
Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, effective March 1, 2024, succeeding Judge
Roslynn R. Mauskoph who has served in that position since February 1, 2021. The
Director of the Administrative Office is the chief administrative officer of the
federal courts and serves under the direction of the Judicial Conference of the
United States. The announcement of the appointment was made by Chief Justice
John G. Roberts, who is the presiding officer of the conference.

Judge Conrad currently serves as a Senior Judge of the U.S. District Court for the
Western District of North Carolina. Prior to being appointed to the bench in June
2005, he served for fifteen years in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western
District of North Carolina, including as the U.S. Attorney from 2001 to 2004.
During his tenure as U.S. Attorney, he was a member of the Attorney General’s
Advisory Committee and chaired the Committee on Violent Crime and co-chaired
the Committee on Terrorism.

As Director, he will assume full-time responsibility for the management of the
Administrative Office, which has over 1000 employees, and for providing
administrative support to 2400 judicial officers and over 28,000 court employees
and Federal Defender employees.

Judge Conrad graduated from Clemson University, where he was an ACC
basketball player, and from the University of Virginia School of Law.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) in December announced historic war crimes
charges against four Russia-affiliated military personnel involved in the war
against Ukraine, the first ever charges under the U.S. war crimes statute for
heinous crimes against a U.S. citizen. The announcement came on December 6,
2023, as charges in the indictments were unsealed in the Eastern District of
Virginia (EDVA). The charges include three war crimes – torture, inhuman
treatment, and unlawful confinement – and one count of conspiracy to commit
war crimes, of a U.S. national in Ukraine following Russia’s invasion of that country
in February 2022. If convicted, the defendants each face a maximum penalty of
life in prison.

The charges were brought in conjunction with investigations by federal law
enforcement agents from Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) and the Federal
Bureau of Investigations (FBI). Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro
Mayorkas and FBI Director Christopher Wray, both NAFUSA members, praised the
work of federal and international law enforcement in bringing justice to American
victims of war-crime atrocities. The charges were brought in partnership between
DOJ and DHS investigators and the EDVA U.S. Attorney’s Office and the DOJ’s War
Crimes Accountability Team (WarCAT), which is based in the Human Rights and
Special Prosecutions Section (HRSP) of DOJ’s Criminal Division.

Attorney General Garland announced the launch of WarCAT, in June 2022 during a
meeting with Ukrainian Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova. At that time, AG
Garland described the team as playing an “integral role in the Department’s
ongoing investigation of potential war crimes over which the U.S. possesses
jurisdiction, such as the killing and wounding of U.S. journalists covering…[the war
in Ukraine.]” He tapped Eli Rosenbaum, a 36-year veteran of the DOJ, who agreed
to postpone his retirement to stand up and lead the team. Rosenbaum had
previously served as Director of the Office of Special Investigations (OSI), which
was primarily responsible for identifying, denaturalizing, and deporting Nazi war
criminals.

On December 19, 2023, AG Garland announced a transition in the leadership of
WarCAT upon the retirement of Rosenbaum, to Christian Levesque, who had previously served as lead prosecutor of the team. Levesque joined the Human
Rights and Special Prosecution Section in 2016 after a career as an international
human rights attorney in the private sector.

Attorney General Merrik Garland announced on December 22, 2023, the
appointment of Jolene Ann Lauria as Assistant Attorney General for
Administration, a position she has held in an acting capacity since the retirement
of Lee Loftus, who had previously held the position, in June 2022. In this role, Ms.
Lauria is also the Department of Justice’s (Department) Chief Financial Officer and
its Designated Agency Ethics Official. She is responsible for Department-wide
financial reporting, the annual financial statemen, budget formulation and
execution, the assets forfeiture fund, and debt management. She was the lead
executive in the consolidation of seven separate financial systems into a single
modern DOJ Unified Financial Management System supporting all 40 Department
components.

Ms. Lauria has been the Department’s Controller since 2007. Prior to that she was
the Department’s Director of Budget Staff. She has held a variety of positions in
budget and financial management in her 33 years in Federal service. She received
a master’s degree in public administration from American University in 1989 and
graduated from the Federal Bureau of Investigation National Academy in 2013 in
Class 252.

Attorney General Merrick Garland held a formal investiture ceremony for the
judges of the new Data Protection Review Court (DPRC) on November 14, 2023.
The ceremony formally swearing in the judges of the new eight-member court
was held in the Department of Justice (DOJ) and is part of the EU-U.S. Data Privacy
Framework and the UK-U.S. Data Bridge Extension. The Attorney General issued
new regulations in October 2022 establishing the DPRC within the Office of
Privacy and Civil Liberties at the DOJ.

The judges of the new DPRC include two former United States Attorneys. Eric
Holder, former U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia as well as former Deputy
Attorney General and Attorney General, and David F. Levi, former U.S. Attorney for
the Eastern District of California and Judge of the U.S. District Court for the
Eastern District of California, later Chief Judge of that Court, are among the eight
judges. The other DPRC judges include James E. Baker, Rajesh De, James X
Dempsey, Mary B. DeRosa, Thomas B. Griffith and Virginia A. Seitz.

The DPRC will review determinations made by the Civil Liberties Protection Officer
of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) in response to
qualifying complaints that allege violations of U.S. law in the conduct of U.S.
signals intelligence activities. Attorney General Garland commented, “Although
this court has been established at the Department of Justice, its judges will
independently decide what remedies, if any, are appropriate for the cases in front
of them, and the intelligence agencies will be expected to abide by their
decisions.”

Attorney General Merrick Garland has appointed seven U.S. Attorneys to serve on
the Attorney General’s Advisory Committee (AGAC) to fill the vacancies of U.S.
Attorneys who have completed their terms and are rotating off. In his
announcement of the selections in October, the Attorney General also advised
that he has selected Gary Restaino, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Arizona, to
serve as the committee’s vice-chair, replacing Cindy Chung, the former U.S.
Attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania who is now a judge on the Third
Circuit Court of Appeals. U.S. Attorney Damian Wiliams, for the Southern District
of New York, remains the AGAC Chair.

The newest members of the AGAC are U.S. Attorneys Alexander M.M. Uballez for
the District of New Mexico, Breon Peace for the Eastern District of New York,
Kenneth Parker for the Southern District of Ohio, Natalie K. Wight for the District
of Oregon, Eric G. Olshan for the Western District of Pennsylvania, Alamdar
Hamdani for the Southern District of Texas, and Christopher R. Kavanaugh for the
Western District of Virginia.

The following U.S. Attorneys rotated off the AGAC: Cole Finegan for the District of
Colorado, Brandon Brown for Western District of Louisiana, Dawn Ison for the
Eastern District of Michigan, Trini Ross for the Western District of New York, and
Sandra Hairston for the Middle District of North Carolina.

The AGAC was created in 1973 and advises the Attorney General on matters of
policy, procedure, and management impacting the Offices of the U.S. Attorneys
and elevates the voices of U.S. Attorneys in Department of Justice policies.

Monty Wilkinson, most recently Director of the Executive Office for United States
Attorneys (EOUSA), retired on June 30, 2023, after serving most of his career with
the Department of Justice. Mr. Wilkinson, who had previously served as Director
of EOUSA from 2014-2017, and prior to that as its Principal Deputy Director and
Chief of Staff, was reappointed EOUSA Director by Attorney General Merrick
Garland on March 14, 2021. EOUSA provides executive and administrative support
for the 93 United States Attorneys.

After graduating from the Georgetown University Law Center in 1988, Mr.
Wilkinson served as a law clerk to Eric Holder, then a judge of the Superior Court
of the District of Columbia. He began his career with the Department of Justice in
1990 as a trial attorney in the Criminal Division. He went on to work as Special
Counsel and Spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia and
continued to serve in senior management positions in that office before becoming
an Associate Deputy Attorney General in 1997. During his career with the DOJ, he
served as Counselor and Deputy Chief of Staff to the Attorney General, as the
Deputy Assistant Attorney General for Human Resources and Administration, as
well as the Acting Attorney General from January 20, 2021 until March 11, 2021,
when Attorney General Garland was sworn in.

Former Director Wilkinson’s friends, including his many friends in NAFUSA, expect
him to spend time with family, travel and play a lot of golf!

For the first time since 2012, the Office of Violence Against Women (OVW) has a
Senate-confirmed Director. The Senate confirmed Rosie Hidalgo on July 11, 2023,
in a bipartisan vote. As Director, she will lead the Department’s principal efforts in
confronting gender-based crimes. Prior to this appointment, Hidalgo served as a
special assistant to President Biden and senior advisor on gender-based violence
at the White House Gender Policy Council. She previously held a position at OVW
as Deputy Director of Policy from 2014-2017 and is also a former director of public
policy for Casa de Esperanza: National Latin@ Network for Healthy Families and
Communities, a national resource center focused on providing training, research,
and policy advocacy to prevent and end domestic violence and sexual assault.

OVW provides federal leadership to reduce violence against women and
administer justice for and strengthen services to survivors of domestic violence,
dating violence, sexual assault and stalking. It oversees more than $700 million
annually for grant programs authorized under the Violence Against Women Act
(VAWA).

On June 14, Attorney General Merrick Garland and Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco, along with DOJ law enforcement heads from DEA, FBI, ATF and the USMS, met with all 93 U.S. Attorneys to discuss the DOJ’s summer anti-violent crime strategy. The meeting followed up the Department-wide strategy launched two years ago to leverage federal resources, including grant programs and federal law enforcement, with state and local partners to combat violent crime.

In his remarks, the Attorney General announced the upcoming launch of the third phase of the U.S. Marshals Operation North Star aimed at locating and arresting fugitives charged with the highest levels of violence. Additionally, he announced that the DEA will be launching the third phase of Operation Overdrive. The first two phases resulted in the seizure of over 13 million deadly doses of fentanyl and 1300 illegal guns as well as over 1700 arrests. The AG also described efforts by the ATF to use its powerful ballistic tools to generate leads on violent criminals from evidence collected at crime scenes. In the last year these tools produced nearly 200,000 leads.

In the meeting with U.S. Attorneys, the AG and DAG discussed the Department’s strategy, which includes providing resources to communities across the country through DOJ grant making components. The Office of Justice Programs and Office of Community Oriented Policing Services are anticipated to award over $1.3 billion to support state and local law enforcement efforts to combat violent crime.

The Attorney General applauded the work of DOJ prosecutors who have prosecuted more than 6000 individuals for violent crimes so far in 2023.