Robert Conrad Named Director of the Administrative Office of U.S. Courts

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.

Death of Former U.S. Attorney James L. Wiggins

James Lamar “Jim” Wiggins passed away January 28,2024, at his residence in
Eastman, Georgia (GA). He was 77.

Born and raised in Savannah, GA, Jim attended Auburn University for two years
before enlisting in the U.S. Army. After graduating from flight school at Ft. Rucker,
Alabama, Jim was selected to attend Cobra flight training at Hunter Army Airfield
in Savannah and was a member of the first class to fly the Cobra in combat in Viet
Nam. He served there from November 1967 until November 1968 and was later
awarded the Silver Star for gallantry.

After completing military service, Jim graduated from Armstrong University in
Savannah and later earned his law degree from Mercer University in 1975. He
began his legal career with Smith and Harrington in Eastman, GA before becoming
an Assistant District Attorney and later Public Defender for the Oconee Judicial
Circuit of GA. He was elected District Attorney in 1981, a position he held for 13
years.

Jim was nominated by President Clinton for U.S. Attorney for the Middle District of
GA and served in that position from February 1, 1994, to April 26, 1996. After
leaving the U.S. Attorneys Office, he established the law firm Almand and Wiggins
where he practiced until his retirement in 2014.

Jim was an avid golfer and Auburn fan, and a devoted father, grandfather and
great-grandfather. He is survived by his wife of 56 years, Kitty Tabb Wiggins, two
daughters, six grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.

Services will be held at Southerland Funeral Chapel in Eastman, Georgia on
February 2, 2024.

President Biden Appoints David Hickton to the PIDB

In December 2023, President Biden appointed NAFUSA member David Hickton to
serve a three-year term on the Public Interest Declassification Board (PIDB)
beginning January 11, 2024. Hickton joins the other members of the nine-person
board who, according to the founding statute, are preeminent in the fields of
history, national security, foreign policy, intelligence policy, social science, law, or
archives.

The PIDB, which was established in 2014, advises and provides recommendations
to the President and other executive branch officials on the “systematic,
coordinated, and comprehensive identification, collection, review for
declassification, and release of declassified records and materials of historic
value…” It serves to promote the fullest possible public access to materials
without undermining the national security of the United States. Five of the nine
members are appointed by the President, and one each by the Speaker and
Minority Leader of the House, and the Majority and Minority Leaders of the
Senate. The current Chair is Mary DeRosa, a Professor from Practice and codirector of the Global Law Scholars Program at the Georgetown University Law
Center. Other members include Andrew Byrnes, Laura DeBonis, Carmen Medina,
Carter Burwell, Ezra Cohen, and Alissa Starzak.

David Hickton left the private practice of law to serve as the U.S. Attorney for the
Western District of Pennsylvania from August 2010 to November 2016, after being
nominated by President Obama. He founded the University of Pittsburgh Institute
for Cyber Law, Policy and Security in 2017 and also has faculty appointments there
as a professor in the School of Law, the School of Computing and Information, and
the Graduate School of Public Information and International Affairs. He currently
serves as Managing Trustee of the National Opioid Abatement Trust II. He is a
graduate of the Pennsylvania State University and the University of Pittsburgh
School of Law.

Russell Coleman Sworn in as Kentucky Attorney General

NAFUSA member Russell Coleman was sworn in as the Commonwealth of Kentucky’s 52nd Attorney General in a private ceremony on January 1, 2024. His wife Ashley and two of their children attended the ceremony. Coleman served as the United States Attorney for the Western District of Kentucky from 2017 to 2021.

Department of Justice War Crimes Prosecution

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.

Jolene Ann Lauria Named AAG for Administration

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.

Barbara McQuade Book Set for Release in 2024

NAFUSA Board member Barbara McQuade has written a new book, Attack from
Within, about the impact of disinformation on America, The book is set to be
released on February 24, 2024. According to pre-publishing information, Ms.
McQuade writes that America is under attack and the weapon is misinformation.
Her book explores how authoritarians throughout history have manipulated the
truth to advance their own agendas and how disinformation is impacting our
democracy.

Ms. McQuade, currently a Professor of Law at the University of Michigan Law
School, her alma mater, was the United States Attorney for the Eastern District of
Michigan from 2010 to 2017, the first woman to hold that position. She currently
sits on the NAFUSA Board of Directors as a member of the class of 2025. In
addition to being a law professor, she is also a legal analyst for NBC and MSNBC.

Attack from Within is Ms. McQuade’s first book and has already received glowing
reviews. Former U.S. Attorney General Eric H. Holder, Jr. described her book as
“…a compelling work about a challenge that–left unexamined and left
unchecked—could undermine our democracy.”

NAFUSA Membership Statistics

As its members know, NAFUSA was founded in March 1979, as a non-profit, by a
handful of former United States Attorneys with a stated purpose to “promote,
defend and further the integrity and the preservation of the litigating authority
and independence of the office of the United States Attorney…” Its first president
was co-founder Bill Mulligan, a Carter appointee from the Eastern District of
Wisconsin.

Since that time, NAFUSA has grown in numbers and to be a more diverse
organization reflecting the appointments made by the presidential administrations
and Attorneys General in the intervening years. We now have over 370 members
and continue to grow. While the chance to reconnect with former Department of
Justice (DOJ) colleagues, to obtain continuing legal education hours in beautiful
venues with great camaraderie, and to develop business opportunities remain
motivating factors for new membership, the founding principles remain the same.
NAFUSA continues to be a great value and a dynamic organization.

With every presidential election cycle, we see an influx of new members. The
largest “class” of former U.S. Attorneys to become NAFUSA members in number,
so far, are from the George W. Bush administration of whom there are currently
81 members. Following closely behind are members representing the Trump
administration with 80 members. The newest member is from the Biden
administration along with 3 others from that administration to date. There are 68
former Obama administration U.S. Attorneys, 52 from the Clinton administration
and 40 NAFUSA members from the Reagan administration. Former George Bush
administration appointees number 24 and there are 20 from the Carter
administration. Finally, we have nine NAFUSA members from the Ford
administration, eight from the Nixon administration and two from the Johnson
administration. What amazing history is reflected in our membership!

Our members include not only former U. S. Attorneys, but also FBI Directors Bob
Mueller and Chris Wray, and former Attorneys General, Deputy Attorneys General
and other high ranking DOJ officials. One of the first Attorney General members
was Dick Thornburg, who served under President Reagan.

We look forward to welcoming new members from all administrations and seeing
them at our annual conferences!

Investiture of Judges For New Data Protection Review Court

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.”