Obama Nominates Rudolph Contreras, Norton’s Recommendation for U.S. District Court Judge Here

July 28, 2011

WASHINGTON, DC -- Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) today spoke with Rudolph Contreras to inform him that the President will nominate him to be a judge on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. Contreras, whom Norton recommended to the President, currently is Chief of the Civil Division in the Office of the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia.

"Rudolph Contreras has had an unusually impressive legal career," Norton said. "I am very pleased that the President has agreed to nominate this exceptionally well-qualified lawyer for our federal district court. Throughout his career as an assistant U.S. attorney and in private practice, he has demonstrated the consummate professionalism, intelligence, character, diligence, and collegiality that predict he will be an outstanding judge."

Contreras, the son of Cuban immigrants, was born in New York but moved to Miami as a young child. He worked his way through Florida State University and graduated from the University of Pennsylvania Law School, cum laude and Order of the Coif, where he served on the law review. He spent the first three years of his legal career as a corporate litigator at Jones Day here, and has since been an assistant U.S. attorney in various capacities, including in important supervisory roles, mostly in the District of Columbia.

Contreras was hired from Jones Day by then-U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Eric Holder as an assistant U.S. attorney in the civil division. He spent his first four years defending the government and the next four years prosecuting claims at both the trial and appellate levels.

After eight years in the U.S. attorney's office in the District, Mr. Contreras served as the chief of the civil division in the U.S. Attorney's Office, District of Delaware, for three years. In 2006, he returned to the U.S. attorney's office here as chief of the civil division, where he supervises and manages 40 assistant U.S. attorneys, six special assistant U.S. attorneys and 31 support staff. Through his management, Contreras has turned around the office's efforts to collect money from those who have defrauded the government through the qui tam process, leading the office to the highest recoveries in the nation.

President Obama, like President Clinton, granted the Congresswoman senatorial courtesy to recommend federal district court judges and other important federal law enforcement officials in the District. She recommended Contreras from a number of candidates screened by her Federal Law Enforcement Nominating Commission, chaired by Pauline Schneider, a former chair of the D.C. Bar and a partner at the law firm, Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP.