Candidate Emerges for U.S. Attorney

Santa Monica Superior Court Judge Debra W. Yang has emerged as the Bush administration’s likely choice for U.S. attorney in Los Angeles, center of the nation’s most populous federal judicial district, several Republican political sources said Friday.

The White House counsel’s office recommended Yang after interviewing several finalists for the post, the sources said.

President Bush has not yet signed off on the nomination, but the sources said a decision could come after completion of an FBI background check on the judge.

Yang, a 42-year-old former federal prosecutor, would become the first Asian American to serve as U.S. attorney for California’s Central Judicial District, which spans seven counties from Orange to San Luis Obispo. The office prosecutes cases such as major drug crimes, financial swindles and civil rights violations.

Contacted by phone at her chambers Friday, Yang said, “I can say this. I am being considered for the U.S. attorney’s position, and I am extremely grateful and pleased to be under consideration by this administration.”

A White House spokesman declined to comment on the selection process.

Word of Yang’s emergence as the front-runner surprised some members of Los Angeles’ legal establishment.

A screening committee of local Republican attorneys had recommended two other candidates to the White House as their top choices out of a field of nearly a dozen.

The local committee’s favorites were Vincent J. Marella, a former federal prosecutor who is a highly regarded white-collar criminal defense lawyer, and Thomas E. Holliday, who also specializes in white-collar defense.

However, Holliday has never worked as a prosecutor, and it has been more than 20 years since Marella was in the U.S. attorney’s office.

Yang left the office just four years ago and has served as a judge since then--an experience that weighed in her favor, the sources said.

Gerald Parsky, who headed Bush’s presidential campaign in California and who chaired the Los Angeles screening committee, declined to comment on Yang’s prospects or the committee’s recommendations. However, sources in Washington and Los Angeles said Parsky told the White House that Yang would be a good choice either for the U.S. attorney’s job or a federal judgeship.

In addition to pursuing the U.S. attorney’s post, Yang had also applied for a position as a federal district judge in Los Angeles.

As recently as last week, when she was interviewed in Washington by representatives from the White House counsel’s office and the Justice Department, she was considered a shoo-in candidate for one of six vacancies on the U.S. District Court in Los Angeles.

Sources said she told Bush administration officials that if she had her choice, she would prefer to be U.S. attorney.

Yang is a Los Angeles native whose grandfather emigrated from Canton, China. She graduated from Pitzer College in 1981 and Boston College Law School in 1985.

She worked in two civil law firms--one in Los Angeles and one in Chicago--during the first three years after she graduated from law school.

Yang was a law clerk for U.S. District Judge Ronald S. W. Lew in Los Angeles from 1988 to 1989. She spent another year in private practice with the high-powered Westside firm of Greenberg, Glusker, Fields, Claman and Machtinger.

In 1990, she joined the U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles and spent the next six years prosecuting, among others, kidnappers, securities swindlers and computer hackers.

Former Gov. Pete Wilson appointed her to the Municipal Court bench in 1997. When the court system was unified in 2000, she became a Superior Court judge. She has presided over a wide range of trials, on issues ranging from drunk driving to toxic dumping.

“She’s a wonderful, wonderful person” and an excellent judge, said Alan B. Haber, supervising judge at the Santa Monica courthouse.

In addition, Yang trains new judges at the state judicial college and teaches at the National Institute of Trial Advocacy. She has also been active in the Southern California Chinese Lawyers Assn. and the Asian American Bar Assn.

“I don’t know how she fits this all in,” said Superior Court Judge Patricia Collins, who was also a federal prosecutor in Los Angeles and has served on the bench in Santa Monica with Yang.

Several other judges and lawyers described Yang as smart, hard-working, highly organized, charming and a “strong Republican.”

Despite her GOP activism, Yang “will bring a thoroughly nonpartisan, nonpolitical perspective to the office,” said one Democratic admirer, Los Angeles City Councilman Jack Weiss, who worked with Yang in the U.S. attorney’s office.

David C. Scheper, who served 12 years in the U.S. attorney’s office and headed the criminal division, raved about Yang, whom he supervised for seven years.

Scheper was particularly impressed with Yang’s 1994 prosecution of Timothy D. Shue, a Michigan parolee who kidnapped a Castaic real estate agent, forced her at gunpoint to withdraw cash and perform sexual favors, then left her in an Arizona motel room.

“She won the trust of an extraordinarily vulnerable victim, and she got a conviction” and a 35-year sentence, said Scheper.

If nominated and confirmed by the Senate, Yang would replace U.S. Atty. John S. Gordon, a career prosecutor who has been heading the staff of nearly 240 prosecutors on an interim basis. Gordon was appointed after the resignation in April of then-U.S. Atty. Alejandro N. Majorkas, an appointee of Democratic President Bill Clinton.