Published on: Wednesday, October 27, 2021

President Joe Biden on Wednesday nominated Cindy K. Chung, 46, a current federal prosecutor, to become U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania (article available here).

Chung has been with the office in Pittsburgh since 2014. She has served as deputy chief of the major crimes section and acting deputy chief of the violent crimes section, as well.

Before coming to Pittsburgh, Chung was a trial attorney in the criminal section of the Department of Justice’s civil rights division in Washington, D.C., from 2009 to 2014. Prior to that, she served as an assistant district attorney in Manhattan and later as an investigation counsel in the official corruption unit in the New York County District Attorney’s office from 2007 to 2009.

Chung received her bachelor’s degree from Yale University in 1997 and her law degree from Columbia Law School in 2002.

She clerked from 2002 to 2003 for U.S. District Judge Myron Thompson in the Middle District of Alabama.

Chung is the first woman to be nominated to the post by a Democratic president and the first Asian-American to be nominated.

The U.S. Attorney’s office in the Western District has more than 50 attorneys and more than 100 employees spread across offices in Pittsburgh, Erie and Johnstown.