Legal News

Law Blog Report Card: U.S. Attorney Michael Garcia to Join Kirkland

By Dan Slater

With the papers rife with speculation over whom President-Elect Obama will nominate to head the Department of Justice in Washington, let’s head off to the provinces — namely, New York — where one U.S. attorney is already on his way out.

In what should mark the beginning of a long migration of U.S. attorneys back into the private sector, Michael Garcia, the top cop in the Southern District of New York, could decamp as early as this week for Kirkland & Ellis. Here are reports from the WSJ and the NYT.

Garcia (SUNY Binghamton, Albany Law) began life at Cahill Gordon in 1989 and then went into government work, first as a clerk for Judge Judith Kaye of the New York State Court of Appeals, then as a federal prosecutor, then as the commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization Service and finally assistant secretary for Immigration and Customs Enforcement before his U.S. attorney appointment.

How did Garcia do in his three years as the SDNY’s head? The office’s successes include white-collar wins in the Refco prosecutions, and the successful prosecutions of corruption cases stemming from the United Nations oil-for-food scandal. (Last week he opted not to bring charges against former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer.) However, the bungled KPMG case that pitted prosecutors against Judge Lewis Kaplan is a forgettable moment, though that case was brought prior to Garcia’s tenure. As for the current financial crisis, federal prosecutors across the river in Brooklyn brought the first two securities-fraud prosecutions — a development viewed by some as a blow to Garcia’s office.

A few names have surfaced as possible Garcia replacements, including the office’s current No. 2, Lev Dassin, who would take over for Garcia until the Obama administration makes an appointment next year; Paul Weiss’s Mark Pomerantz; and Preet Bharara, a former prosecutor who’s currently serving as Sen. Chuck Schumer’s chief counsel on the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee.

Photo: The Capitol

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on November 10, 2008 (boomark / email).