Tuesday, November 21, 2006
Page 1
George S. Cardona Named Acting United States Attorney
By TINA BAY, Staff Writer
Chief Assistant U.S. Attorney George S. Cardona was named yesterday by the Justice Department as acting U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California pending the appointment of Debra Wong Yang’s successor.
“[Yang] was very good as U.S. attorney and she’ll certainly be missed by the office,” Cardona told the MetNews. “We’ve got a large number of excellent assistants and we’ll try to keep doing the good things we’ve been doing.”
A permanent successor has yet to be appointed for the top federal prosecutor, who resigned from her post effective Friday in order to co-chair Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher’s national crisis management practice starting Jan. 1.
Cardona, who was previously the number two person under Yang, said that he is not seeking the presidential appointment, but declined to say why.
“I haven’t put my name in as a candidate,” he said, adding that he could not estimate when his term as interim leader would end.
A spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s Office could not give an estimated time frame within which to expect a permanent appointment, or the names of those under consideration. Beverly Hills attorney Nathan Hochman, a former assistant U.S. attorney, has reportedly expressed interest in the position.
Cardona, 46, had been the chief assistant U.S. attorney since July 2002, prior to which he worked in the Los Angeles City Attorney’s Office as the chief of its criminal branch.
He began his career in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in 1991 as an assistant United States attorney in the Central District. He left briefly to become the top appellate assistant to the U.S. attorney in the Northern District of California, then returned to the Central District office as head of the criminal section.
From 1989-1991, he worked as a deputy district attorney in Los Angeles, and has taught criminal trial advocacy at UCLA School of Law since 2002.
Before entering public service, Cardona was an associate at Irell & Manella from 1987-1989 and clerked for Judge Dolores K. Sloviter of the Third Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in Philadelphia.
He was admitted to the State Bar in 1988 after receiving both his undergraduate and law degrees from Yale University in 1982 and 1986, respectively. He is also a member of the Pennsylvania bar.
Prior to law school, Cardona worked for a year as a systems engineer for Westinghouse Defense Electronics in Baltimore.
Copyright 2006, Metropolitan News Company