Monday, August 2, 2002
Page 3
Bush Nominates Judge Carol Chien-Hua Lam to Be U.S. Attorney in San Diego
By a MetNews Staff Writer
San Diego Superior Court Judge Carol Chien-Hua Lam has been nominated to be U.S. attorney for the Southern District of California by President Bush.
The White House Thurday sent the nomination of Lam, 42, a former assistant U.S. attorney, to the Senate. The president’s intent to nominate Lam for the post was made public in May, but the nomination was delayed by routine background checks.
The nomination of Lam, a political independent appointed to the state bench by Democratic Gov. Gray Davis in November 2000, was reportedly delayed by Republican infighting that led at least one other contender to withdraw.
If confirmed, Lam would be the second woman of Asian descent to be a U.S. attorney, after Debra W. Yang of the Central District of California.
Prior to being appointed to the bench, Lam prosecuted a number of high-profile cases, including the money laundering charge of which financier Richard Silberman was convicted. Silberman was a political heavyweight who helped Jerry Brown get elected governor and was married at the time of his indictment to Susan Golding, a county supervisor who went on to become mayor of San Diego.
As the Senate prepared to recess for the month, the White House also made a number of nominations to federal courts.
Rosemary M. Collyer, a Washington, D.C. labor lawyer and former general counsel to the National Labor Relations Board, was nominated to be U.S. district judge for the District of Columbia; Charles E. Erdmann of Colorado, who helped oversee elections in Bosnia and Herzogovina to be a judge of the Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces, Gregory L. Frost, a state trial judge, to be district judge for the Southern District of Ohio, and Mark E. Fuller, a state prosecutor, to be district judge for the Middle District of Alabama.
Richard J. Holwell, a litigation partner at White & Case, was nominated to be district judge for the Southern District of New York. He has served as litigation counsel to a law school classmate, Gov. George Pataki, who recommended his appointment. Among other cases, he succeeded in persuading the state’s highest court that the governor had the power to appoint a special prosecutor in a case involving the alleged murder of a police officer, bypassing a local district attorney who might not have sought the death penalty.
Three candidates were nominated to the District Court for the District of New Jersey—Robert B. Kugler, a magistrate judge in Camden, Jose L. Linares, a state trial judge in Newark, and Freda L. Wolfson, a magistrate judge in Trenton.
Copyright 2002, Metropolitan News Company