The President Trump administration has appointed a new U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts.
Acting U.S. Attorney General James McHenry appointed Leah Belaire Foley to the post on Monday, the U.S. Attorney’s office for Massachusetts announced today.
“I can think of no greater mission than that of public service and it is the honor of a lifetime to now serve in the capacity of U.S. Attorney,” Foley said in a statement included with the announcement. “I am profoundly humbled by the opportunity to serve our great nation as the chief federal law enforcement officer in Massachusetts.”
“I look forward to working with the outstanding men and women of the U.S. Attorney’s Office and our local, state and federal law enforcement partners to protect our communities and support the principles of the rule of law,” she continued.
Foley replaces U.S. Attorney Joshua Levy, who tendered his resignation following Trump's election, as is the norm for all political appointees when a new administration comes in.
Foley is no stranger to the federal courts, having served as a federal prosecutor in Washington, D.C., where she prosecuted violent crimes, sex crimes, felony narcotics and firearms cases. In 2006, she joined the Massachusetts office as an assistant U.S. Attorney in the criminal division.
She most recently served as the deputy chief of the office’s Narcotics & Money Laundering Unit, where she oversaw international and domestic narcotics investigations and international money laundering, immigration, human trafficking and firearms cases, according to the U.S. Attorney’s office.
A U.S. Attorney's office spokeswoman said the office does not yet have an official photo of Foley to provide.
Foley has a Juris Doctor degree from Loyola Law School, a college of Loyola Marymount University, a private Catholic university in Los Angeles. She supplemented that with a Master of Laws degree from Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., in 1996. Her undergraduate degree is from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette where she studied English, philosophy and French.
A wedding announcement published in the New York Times on May 23, 2004, states that she married college professor Fritz Foley, who currently serves as both a professor and the senior associate dean for strategic financial planning at Harvard Business School, according to his LinkedIn profile.
This is a developing story.
