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Loretta Lynch

Loretta Lynch

  • Democratic
Career

U.S. attorney general, 2015-2017
U.S. attorney, Eastern District of New York, 1999-2001, 2010-2015

Education

B.A., Harvard College
J.D, Harvard Law School

Details

Born: May 21, 1959

U.S. Attorney General

Biography

Loretta Elizabeth Lynch served as the attorney general of the United States from April 27, 2015 to January 20, 2017, becoming the first African American woman to hold this office—the second African American after Eric Holder and the second woman after Janet Reno.

Lynch was born on May 21, 1959 in Greensboro, North Carolina. Her father was a Baptist minister who opened his church's basement to civil rights leaders and students who organized lunch counter sit-ins in North Carolina. As a child, she and her father would often watch court proceedings in the courthouse in Durham, North Carolina. She earned a Bachelor of Arts in English and American literature from Harvard College in 1981 and a Juris Doctor from Harvard Law School in 1984.

After working as a litigation associate, Lynch joined the Eastern District as a drug and violent-crime prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney's office in 1990. From 1994 to 1998, she served as the chief of the Long Island office, and from 1998 to 1999, she was the chief assistant U.S. Attorney in the Eastern District and headed the Brooklyn office. In 1999, she was nominated to serve as the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York. In 2001, she left the U.S. Attorney's office to become a partner in a law firm and worked there until being nominated in January 2010 to again serve as U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York. From 2003 to 2005, she was a member of the board of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

Lynch was nominated for U.S. attorney general by President Barack Obama on November 8, 2014 and confirmed on April 23, 2015, making her nomination process one of the longest in the history of the United States.

Sources: Ballotpedia (n.d.). Loretta_Lynch. Retrieved on November 21 2022, from https://ballotpedia.org/Loretta_Lynch

Speeches