Tuesday, February 19, 2002
Page 2
Senate Confirms Three Federal District Judges, One of Whom Is a Kentucky Senator’s Son
By a MetNews Staff Writer
The Senate has confirmed three new federal district judges.
Approved by voice vote late Thursday were David L. Bunning to be U.S. district judge for the Eastern District of Kentucky, James E. Gritzner to be U.S. district judge for the Southern District of Iowa, and Richard J. Leon to be U.S. district judge for the District of Columbia.
Bunning was an assistant U.S. attorney for the district for 10 years. He is the son of Sen. James Bunning, R-Ky.
Gritzner has been an insurance defense lawyer in Des Moines, Iowa for more than 20 years, with a specialty in mass disaster cases. He has also prosecuted more than 100 disciplinary cases for the ethics committee of the Iowa State Bar Association.
Leon was a federal prosecutor in the Southern District of New York and a professor at St. John’s University School of Law before joining the Criminal Section of the Justice Department’s Tax Division. He served as deputy assistant attorney general in the Environment and Natural Resources Division during President Reagan’s second term, later joining a Washington, D.C. firm where he specialized in white-collar criminal defense.
He also served as deputy chief minority counsel to the U.S. House Select “Iran-Contra” Committee in 1987, chief minority counsel to the House Foreign Affairs Committee “October Surprise” Task Force in 1992, special counsel to the House Banking, Finance and Urban Affairs Committee for its “Whitewater” investigation and hearings in 1994, and special counsel to the bipartisan House Ethics Reform Task Force in 1997.
Copyright 2002, Metropolitan News Company