Rodger A. Heaton has been serving as the United States Attorney for the Central District of Illinois since December 1, 2005.
Mr. Heaton has held a number of supervisory positions within the U.S. Attorney’s Office, including supervisor of the Springfield office, Chief of the district’s Appellate Division, and most recently as Chief of the Civil Division where he supervised the district’s civil court matters including, among other matters, health care fraud litigation, employment discrimination, enforcement of the Americans with Disabilities Act, environmental issues, bankruptcy, and collections. He has prosecuted numerous complex criminal cases involving bribery, tax evasion, narcotics and weapons offenses, price-fixing, money laundering and fraud. As Chief of the Appellate Division, Mr. Heaton argued more than 60 cases before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit.
Mr. Heaton began his career as a federal prosecutor in Indianapolis in 1989 before transferring to the U.S. Attorney’s office in the Central District of Illinois, where he served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney from July 1990 until December 2000. From January 2001 to April 2003, Mr. Heaton was a Litigation Partner at Kirkland & Ellis, Chicago. He returned to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in May 2003.
Mr. Heaton was also selected for assignment as an Associate Independent Counsel with the Office of Independent Counsel from September 1997 until July 1998 in Little Rock, Arkansas, and Washington, D.C. In that capacity, Mr. Heaton handled the tax evasion prosecution of former Governor Jim Guy Tucker and two business associates. He also supervised the preparation of briefs and oral argument on several complex constitutional, statutory, and common law issues in all levels of the federal court system including in the Supreme Court. In October 1998, Mr. Heaton received the Department of Justice’s Director’s Award in connection with a successful prosecution of several state employees and contractors in a public corruption scheme.
For several years, Mr. Heaton served as an adjunct professor at the University of Illinois College of Law where he taught courses in white collar crime. From 1995 to 1999, he served as a member of the school board in Rochester, Illinois.
Mr. Heaton, a native of central Illinois, received a B.S. degree from the University of Illinois-Urbana, Champaign in 1981, and a J.D., magna cum laude, from the Indiana University School of Law in 1985. Heaton is married and the father of four children.