NAFUSA Executive Director Rich Rossman has announced that he is stepping down as the executive director of NAFUSA, effective as of the close of the San Diego conference. Rich joined NAFUSA in 1981 and served as president in 2009-2010. He became the 5th NAFUSA executive director in 2011, a post he has held for 11 years.

Rich served as the United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan (1980-1981).  He previously served as the Chief Assistant U.S. Attorney (1977-1980) and as the Chief Deputy Federal Defender (1972-1975) in Detroit. In 1998-1999, he returned to the Department of Justice, serving as the Chief of Staff in the Criminal Division at Main Justice.  He received his J.D. from the University of Michigan Law School in 1964.

Rich and Patty are retired and live in Northern Michigan in a little resort town named Leland. There isn’t a traffic light in their whole county. Nevertheless, they both intend to continue to be active in the NAFUSA community which includes many of their very best friends.

Monty Wilkinson will speak at the Annual Conference in San Diego with an update on currents activities at EOUSA.

Monty was appointed Director of the Executive Office for United States Attorneys (EOUSA) by Attorney General Merrick B. Garland, on March 14, 2021. The Executive Office, created in 1953, provides general guidance and support to the 94 United States Attorneys’ offices and their more than 12,000 employees.

Prior to being appointed Director, Mr. Wilkinson served as the acting Attorney General from January 20, 2021, until Attorney General Garland was sworn in on March 11, 2021. He previously served as the Director of EOUSA from April 2014 until December 2017 and prior to that as its Principal Deputy Director and Chief of Staff.

During his career with the Department of Justice, Mr. Wilkinson has served as Counselor and Deputy Chief of Staff to the Attorney General, as an Associate Deputy Attorney General, and as the Deputy Assistant Attorney General for Human Resources and Administration. He also held senior management positions for nearly a decade in the United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia. Mr. Wilkinson started his career at the Department of Justice in 1990 as a trial attorney in the Criminal Division.

Mr. Wilkinson is a graduate of Dartmouth College and the Georgetown University Law Center. He is the recipient of a Department of Justice Special Achievement Award, a United States Attorney’s Office Distinguished Service Award, and the Attorney General’s Mary C. Lawton Lifetime Service Award.

On February 9, 2022, NAFUSA member Neil MacBride (ED Virginia) was confirmed by the United States Senate (61-33) to be the General Counsel at the Treasury Department. He was nominated to the post by President Biden on June 3, 2021. Before MacBride served as United States Attorney, he served as an Associate Deputy Attorney General at Main Justice and earlier as Chief Counsel to then Senator Joe Biden on the Senate Judiciary Committee. Most recently he has been a litigation partner at Davis Polk & Wardwell and the head of the its Washington office and as co-head of the Firm’s Government Investigations Practice.

According to The New York Times, NAFUSA member Doug Jones (ND Alabama 1997-2001) will serve as a guide for President Biden’s Supreme Court nominee during the Senate confirmation process. Jones was the first Democrat in decades to hold a United States Senate seat in Alabama, and seen by The Times as an olive branch offered by President Biden “as he frequently co-sponsored bipartisan legislation during his three years in the Senate.” Once a nominee is selected, Jones will introduce her to senators and prepare her for hearings.

Jones is a long time member of NAFUSA and would have been installed as president of NAFUSA in 2018 if he hadn’t stepped down to run for the Senate. On April 20, 2021, Doug was featured on a NAFUSA webinar entitled “Justice Delayed Not Justice Denied: The prosecutions of the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing cases.”

The NAFUSA Foundation has created the NAFUSA Foundation Intern Scholarship program which awards $5,000.00 scholarships to unpaid student interns who have performed outstanding work while interning at the United States Attorney’s Offices and the Department of Justice and for their achievements in law school.  The Foundation has awarded its first four scholarships. 

Suzanne Bell, Deputy Director and Chief of Staff of EOUSA, and the U.S. Attorneys’ Offices assisted the Foundation by recommending individuals who met the criteria set out by the Foundation. The recipients of the scholarships are Alana Cammack of the University of Alabama School of Law, nominated by the Middle District of Alabama; Hannah Cho of the University of California, Davis School of Law, nominated by the Western District of Washington; April Hartman of Loyola University, nominated by the EOUSA; and Kathryn Pflug of Notre Dame Law School, nominated by the District of Nebraska. These individuals’ work ethic, positive attitude, professionalism and drive will make them outstanding attorneys with a career path that we hope includes public service.

Thank you to Donna Bucella, Jessie Liu, Rich Rossman, Paul Coggins and Bill Lutz for coordinating these efforts with Foundation President, Edward L. Dowd, Jr.

We are delighted to be able to assist these very deserving young people.

Jerry Martin

On August 2, 2021, the Department of Justice announced that mail-order testing supplier Arriva Medical LLC (Arriva), and its parent, Alere Inc.) Alere) have agreed to pay $160 million to resolve allegations that they violated the False Claims Act. The settlement resolves allegations that Arriva and Alere made, or caused, claims to Medicare that were false because kickbacks were paid to Medicare beneficiaries, patients were ineligible to receive meters, or patients were deceased.

The civil settlement includes the resolution of claims brought under the qui tam or whistleblower provisions of the False Claims Act by Gregory Goodman, a former employee at an Arriva call center in Antioch, Tennessee. Goodman was represented by NAFUSA member Jerry Martin (MD Tennessee 2010-2013). Under the FCA a private party can file an action on behalf of the United States and receive a portion of any recovery. The Act also permits the United States to intervene and take over the litigation. as the government did here. Goodman will receive $28,548,749 as his share of the recovery.

According to the Tennessean, Martin called the win a “true David versus Goliath story,” and  said he was proud to still be able to work with the government of “Team America” from time to time.

Gilbert Stroud Merritt, Jr., the longest-serving member of the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals died on Monday, January 17. He was 86.

“Judge Merritt was a cherished friend of my entire family,” former Vice President Al Gore told The Tennessean. “A deeply intelligent and deliberative legal thinker, he was an ardent defender of the liberties that form the foundation of our Constitution…I am holding his family in my thoughts and prayers.”

He sat of the bench for 44 years. He earlier served as the United States Attorney for the Middle District of Tennessee from 1966-1969 under President Lyndon B. Johnson. He received a bachelor of arts degree from Yale University and a bachelor of law from Vanderbilt University Law School. He is survived by three children and three grandchildren.

On June, 26, 2019, NAFUSA former president Hal Hardin interviewed Judge Merritt as part of the oral history project of the Nashville Bar Association.

As is our custom, NAFUSA has requested that an American flag be flown over Main Justice and it will be presented Judge Merritt’s family.

NAFUSA lifetime member James Burns Tucker, 82, died on December 28, 2021 following a lengthy battle with illness. James was born in Georgia on September 25, 1939.

He earned a B.A. in English from Millsaps College and a Juris Doctorate from the University of Mississippi School of Law.

His professional accomplishments were many and included 30 years of service in the U.S. Attorney’s office, Southern District of Mississippi (Chief of the Criminal Division and Interim U.S. Attorney) and 20 years of practicing law with Butler, Snow in Ridgeland, MS. He also served 30 years in the Naval Reserve in the Judge Advocate General’s office and retired with the rank of Captain. He also taught Trial Practice at the Mississippi College School of Law for 25 years with his friend and colleague Judge Kent McDaniel.

Among the many professional honors bestowed on Tucker’s are America’s Top 100 Attorney’s Lifetime Achievement Award and his 2016 induction into the Ole Miss Law Alumni Hall of Fame; membership in the American College of Trial Lawyers; and membership in The American Board of Trial Advocates.

Tucker is survived by his wife, Jeanne; their daughter Lisa Rainey Fletcher (Fred); their son Charles Edward Rainey, Sr. (Meredith); 10 grandchildren and 3 great-grandchildren.

Funeral services will be held on Sunday, January 2, 2022 at 1:00 p.m. at Christ United Methodist Church of Jackson, Mississippi