President Trump on Monday appointed Joseph Nocella Jr., a Long Island district judge, to be the interim U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York.
In doing so, Mr. Trump sidestepped the objections of Senator Chuck Schumer, the New York Democrat and minority leader, who had said he would block Mr. Nocella’s nomination along with that of Jay Clayton, Mr. Trump’s pick to lead the Southern District of New York. Mr. Trump named Mr. Clayton the interim U.S. attorney, and he did the same for Mr. Nocella.
Mr. Nocella, who arrived at the U.S. attorney’s office Monday morning for his first day on the job, was sworn in by the district’s chief judge, Margo K. Brodie, in a private ceremony in the afternoon. Wearing a gray windowpane suit with an American flag pin fixed to his lapel, Mr. Nocella took the oath of the office with his hand on a white and gold Bible in her wood-paneled courtroom.
Mr. Nocella will serve for 120 days or until he is confirmed by the Senate, according to a news release from the office.
Mr. Trump had announced that he wanted Mr. Nocella to be the district’s top prosecutor in a social media post on Jan. 6. Mr. Nocella served as a prosecutor in the Eastern District from 1991 to 1995, a stint during which he helped the office win a conviction against Vittorio Amuso, the head of the Lucchese crime family.
“It is especially gratifying to return to the very district where I began my prosecutorial career,” Mr. Nocella said in the news release.
Mr. Trump’s choice surprised some current and former members of the office, given that Mr. Nocella had been presiding over family court and, before that, lower-level offenses like drunken driving on Long Island as a Nassau County district judge.
Todd Blanche, the No. 2 official at the Justice Department, privately objected to the nomination, telling the White House that the position was too important to place in the hands of someone with relatively little experience, according to two people familiar with his views.
Before becoming a judge in 2022, Mr. Nocella also worked as a lawyer for Nassau County and as a town attorney in Oyster Bay and Hempstead. He is well-connected in G.O.P. circles on Long Island and has been a regular contributor to Republican causes, including candidates and clubs.
In 1991, Mr. Nocella was hired as an assistant U.S. attorney in the Eastern District’s general crimes unit, the starting level for junior prosecutors in the office. He then transitioned to working in the narcotics and organized crime divisions of the office.
Joel Cohen, who served as an assistant U.S. attorney in the district in the 1990s, joined the general crimes unit around the same time as Mr. Nocella and sat next to him for a portion of his tenure. He described Mr. Nocella as “fearless” and “passionate.”
Shortly after the two men joined the office, there was a hiring freeze that made it more difficult for younger prosecutors to climb the ranks. They were saddled with more work, Mr. Cohen said, but Mr. Nocella relished it.
“A lot of his fearlessness came from having tried lots of cases,” Mr. Cohen said. “He was one of the young prosecutors who thrived in that circumstance.”
Mr. Nocella will now preside over one of the largest and most influential U.S. attorney’s offices in the country. The Eastern District is home to eight million people, covering a jurisdiction that includes Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island and Nassau and Suffolk Counties. Mr. Nocella will earn around $190,000 a year overseeing the office and its 160 or so prosecutors.
Throughout its history, the district has been at the center of cases involving organized crime, violent drug cartels and public corruption. John Durham, Mr. Nocella’s predecessor as interim U.S. attorney, has worked in the office since 2005, overseeing the prosecution and conviction of MS-13 gang leaders and members of other violent street gangs; he is expected to return to his previous post as head of the Long Island division.
More recently, the Eastern District has focused on cases involving transnational repression by the Chinese government, which has sought to harass and repatriate Chinese nationals living abroad.
Maggie Haberman contributed reporting.
Santul Nerkar is a Times reporter covering federal courts in Brooklyn.
William K. Rashbaum is a Times reporter covering municipal and political corruption, the courts and broader law enforcement topics in New York.
Glenn Thrush covers the Department of Justice for The Times and has also written about gun violence, civil rights and conditions in the country’s jails and prisons.
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