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JUSTICE DEPARTMENT ANNOUNCES APPOINTMENT OF DEBORAH J. RHODES AS UNITED STATES ATTORNEY FOR THE SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF ALABAMA
Month Day, Year
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
WASHINGTON, D.C. - The Justice Department today announced the appointment of Deborah J. Rhodes to serve as the United States Attorney for the Southern District of Alabama to succeed David P. York, who resigned from the position effective Friday, September 30, 2005. Rhodes will serve under an Attorney General Appointment for 120 days.
Deborah Rhodes has served as Counselor to the Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division of the Department of Justice since 2004. She also serves as an ex officio Commissioner on the U.S. Sentencing Commission and represents the Department of Justice on the Criminal Rules Advisory Committee of the Judicial Conference.
Prior to her service to the Criminal Division, Rhodes served as an Assistant United States Attorney in the Southern District of California from 1990 to 2004. There she served as Acting Chief of the Appellate Section and Deputy Chief of the Narcotics Enforcement Section. She successfully prosecuted large drug organizations and returned the first indictments against the Arellano-Felix brothers, leaders of the Tijuana cartel, widely reported as the most violent drug cartel in Mexico. From 1987 to 1990, Rhodes served as a Trial Attorney in the Organized Crime and Racketeering Section of the Philadelphia Strike Force, U.S. Department of Justice, where she prosecuted high profile RICO and organized crime cases. Rhodes clerked for U.S. District Court Judge J. William Ditter, Jr. of Philadelphia, PA, from 1985 to 1987. Rhodes earned her law degree, with honors, from the Rutgers University School of Law, where she served as Editor-in-Chief of the Rutgers Law Journal from 1984 to 1985. She earned her undergraduate degree from Wheaton College.