Good morning Obots! Today’s African American Super Lawyer works in the Obama Administration.

Justice Department Bio Tony West was nominated by President Barack Obama to be the Assistant Attorney General for the Justice Department’s Civil Division on January 22, 2009. He was confirmed by the U.S. Senate on April 20, 2009. As the largest litigating division in the Department of Justice, the Civil Division represents the United States in legal challenges to congressional statutes, Administration policies, and federal agency actions. These include: defending the recently-passed health care reform legislation against constitutional challenges; litigating national security cases; and providing support and guidance to agencies responding to the recent oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The Civil Division also defends the President, cabinet officers, and other federal employees in lawsuits filed against them throughout the country. Mr. West has focused on these traditional areas, as well as bolstering the Civil Division’s affirmative civil enforcement efforts, such as health care fraud, mortgage fraud, and other civil actions to recover taxpayer money lost to fraud and abuse. Since January 2009, the Civil Division, working with our partners in U.S. Attorney’s Offices around the country, secured over $10 billion in fraud settlements, judgments, fines and penalties under the Division’s statutory authorities. In addition, Mr. West has emphasized the Civil Division’s responsibility to enforce the nation’s consumer protection laws. Since January 2009, the Office of Consumer Protection Litigation has convicted more than 90 defendants with imposed criminal penalties exceeding $3.3 billion for illegal activities in connection with defrauding consumers. During this same time period, over 55 defendants were sentenced to some form of incarceration, receiving a total of more than 224 years. Mr. West first served in the Department of Justice barely a year after graduating from law school. From 1993 through 1994, he served as a Special Assistant to the Deputy Attorney General, during which time he worked on the development of national crime policy. From 1994 to 1999, Mr. West served as an Assistant United States Attorney in the Northern District of California, where he prosecuted child sexual exploitation, fraud, narcotics distribution, interstate theft, and high tech crime. As a federal prosecutor, Mr. West led the successful investigation, prosecution, and appeals of the Orchid Club case, at the time one of the largest international Internet child pornography production and distribution ring prosecutions in history. From 1999 to 2001, Mr. West served as a state Special Assistant Attorney General in California, advising the California Attorney General on matters including identity theft, high-tech crime, the Microsoft antitrust litigation, civil rights, and police officer training. Prior to returning to the Justice Department, Mr. West was a litigation partner at Morrison & Foerster, LLP in San Francisco. Mr. West graduated with honors from Harvard College, where he served as publisher of the Harvard Political Review, and received his law degree from Stanford Law School, where he was elected President of the Stanford Law Review.