U.S. attorney names new first assistant

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A career prosecutor with 15 years of experience in the U.S. Attorney’s Office has been appointed as the first assistant U.S. attorney.

U.S. Attorney Leah B. Foley announced the appointment of Katherine Ferguson on Jan. 23.

Ferguson has been deputy chief of the office’s narcotics and money laundering unit since 2017 and lead task force attorney for the district’s Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force since 2021, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said.

In her time as a federal prosecutor, Ferguson has had extensive experience working with other federal and state law enforcement “to dismantle multi-jurisdictional and international drug trafficking and money laundering organizations,” the office said.

Foley, who was named interim U.S. attorney on Jan. 20, also spent time as deputy chief of the narcotics and money laundering unit and was lead attorney for the Organized Crime and Drug Enforcement Task Force.

President Donald Trump has made illegal drugs an early focus in his second term. On his first day in office, he issued an executive order seeking to define some drug cartels as “foreign terrorist organizations.”

Before joining the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Ferguson was an assistant district attorney in Suffolk County. She was a law clerk to 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Sandra L. Lynch from 2006 to 2007.

See also:

• Longtime prosecutor tapped to lead U.S. Attorney’s Office
• Lawyers gauge fallout from Trump win on courts, USAO