First Assistant U.S. Attorney Don DeGabrielle — the favored candidate of most of Houston’s criminal defense bar — was recommended to President Bush today by Texas Senators Kay Bailey Hutchison and John Cornyn to become the next U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Texas. Mr. DeGabrielle will replace his former boss, Michael Shelby, who resigned in June to join Houston-based Fulbright & Jaworski’s white collar crime section.Chuck Rosenberg, a former chief of staff to U.S. Deputy Attorney General James Comey, has been the interim U.S. Attorney since Mr. Shelby’s resignation.
Inasmuch as Mr. DeGabrielle has been with the local U.S. Attorney’s office since 1986, he is well-known to the local criminal defense bar that has become somewhat frustrated with the revolving door nature of the U.S. Attorney’s job in Houston over the past decade. Given the misconduct of the Enron Task Force in a number of high-profile Enron-related criminal cases over the past year, a huge sigh of relief could be heard from Houston’s criminal defense bar when Mr. DeGabrielle was recommended instead of one of the prosecutors off of the Task Force, at least one of whom was known to have applied for the position. Mr. DeGabrielle and the rest of the local U.S. Attorney’s office recused themselves at the outset of the criminal investigation into Enron, which led to the creation of the Enron Task Force in the first place.
Meanwhile, Senators Hutchison and Cornyn also recommended to President Bush that Fulbright & Jaworski partner and well-known local maritime lawyer Gray Miller replace U.S. District Judge Ewing Werlein Jr., who is scheduled to take senior status at the end of this year.