Biden nominates 5 US Attorneys across 4 states

President Joe Biden announced five new U.S. Attorney nominees on Friday, moving to fill top federal prosecutor posts for districts in Illinois, Idaho, Pennsylvania and California.

The U.S. Attorney picks are the latest of the 48 announced nominees since Biden took office, according to the White House, amounting to just over half of the 93 U.S attorney positions throughout the country and its territories. The new nominees include a state senator, three current prosecutors and a former public defender.

Rachelle L. Crowe is Biden's pick for the Southern District of Illinois. She is an Illinois state senator and spent 2006 to 2018 as an assistant state's attorney in the Madison County State's Attorney's Office. She also worked as an associate at three law firms: Carmody MacDonald PC, Riezman Berger PC and Hoagland Fitzgerald Smith & Pranaitis.

Biden nominated Joshua D. Hurwit, a veteran assistant U.S. attorney, to head the prosecutor's office in Idaho. Hurwit has been at the Gem State's U.S. attorney's office since 2012 and previously worked at Covington & Burling LLP, Kirkland & Ellis LLP and Paul Weiss Rifkind Wharton & Garrison LLP.

Biden's two nominees for Pennsylvania are Gerard M. Karam for the Middle District and Jacqueline C. Romero for the Eastern District. Karam is a partner at Mazzoni Karam Petorak & Valvano, where he has worked for more than two decades. He also was chief public defender in Pennsylvania's Lackawanna County for a decade and also served as an assistant public defender in the office.

Romero has been an assistant U.S. attorney in the Eastern District since 2006 and previously held multiple government positions, including senior counsel for the U.S. Mint and trial attorney in the Commercial Litigation Branch of the U.S. Department of Justice.

Phillip A. Talbert is Biden's nominee for the Eastern District of California. He is the attorney general-appointed interim U.S. attorney for the district, a post he also previously held in 2016 and 2017. He joined the Eastern District's U.S. attorney's office in 2002 and before that served multiple stints at the DOJ, including assistant counsel for the Office of Professional Responsibility and trial attorney in the Criminal Division.

It's unclear how quickly the new nominees will be confirmed. U.S. attorney nominations are generally considered noncontroversial and are swiftly advanced by the Senate Judiciary Committee and confirmed on the Senate floor. But Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., has objected to fast-tracking nominations over a dispute with the DOJ. The Senate confirmed one of the delayed U.S. attorney nominees for the District of Minnesota in March in a rare recorded vote.

So far, 32 U.S. attorneys have been confirmed and eight others have been approved by the Judiciary Committee, according to a spokeswoman for committee chairman Dick Durbin, D-Ill.

Biden also tapped three new U.S. marshal nominees on Friday. Michael M. Contrades, the nominee for the District of Hawaii, has been a field representative for Rep. Kaili'i Kahele, D-Hawaii, since last year and previously worked in the County of Kaua'i Police Department from 1994 to 2019.

David C. Davis, the nominee for the Southern District of Illinois, has been a task force officer for the Illinois State Police Department since 2017 and before that spent more than two decades working for the U.S. Marshals Service.

Enix Smith III, the nominee for the Eastern District of Louisiana, worked for a decade in the office of former Rep. Cedric Richmond, who is now a top adviser to Biden. Smith previously worked as a quality control supervisor for Quadel Consulting Corp. and field supervisor for Eagle Environmental.