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Benton J. Campbell On October 19, 2007, Benton J. Campbell was appointed interim United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York. In that capacity, he is responsible for overseeing all federal criminal and civil investigations and cases in Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island, as well as Nassau and Suffolk Counties on Long Island. He supervises a staff of approximately 160 attorneys and over 130 support personnel. Mr. Campbell joined the Department of Justice as an Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York in 1994, after three years as a litigation associate at Kirkland & Ellis in Washington, D.C. As a prosecutor in the EDNY, he investigated and prosecuted a variety of federal crimes, including the trial and conviction of Russian organized crime “Godfather” Vyacheslav Ivankov, the first prosecution of a major Russian organized crime leader in the United States. Thereafter, Mr. Campbell served as Deputy Chief - and subsequently Chief - of the Violent Criminal Enterprises Section and Coordinator of Asian Organized Crime. In these capacities, he led a unit dedicated to the prosecution of violent gangs, emerging criminal organizations, and terrorist groups, supervised the office’s terrorism program and its response to the September 11, 2001 attacks, and obtained the conviction and life sentence of multi-millionaire Gurmeet Singh Dhinsa after a four-month death penalty trial on racketeering, murder, and obstruction of justice charges. In February 2002, Mr. Campbell was appointed Deputy Chief of the Criminal Division and managed the activities of 110 Assistant U.S. Attorneys. Mr. Campbell has prosecuted nearly every type of federal crime, including securities fraud, white collar crime, money laundering, tax violations, narcotics, racketeering, homicide, violent crime, firearms, and public corruption. In 2003, Mr. Campbell was recruited to become a member of the team assembled to investigate and prosecute the crimes stemming from the collapse of the Enron Corporation, and oversaw the investigation, prosecution, and conviction of senior executives from Enron’s Broadband Services unit for securities fraud and related crimes. In 2005, Mr. Campbell joined the Justice Department’s Criminal Division on detail from the EDNY to serve as Acting Counselor to the Assistant Attorney General of the Criminal Division, assisting in the development of policy and representing the Department before the Judicial Conference’s Advisory Committee on Criminal Rules and its Standing Committee on Rules, Practice, and Procedure. He also represented the Department on the Council of the American Bar Association’s Criminal Justice Section. In 2006, he also served as an Acting Deputy Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division. From 2006 to 2007, Mr. Campbell served as the Acting Chief of Staff and Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General for the Department of Justice Criminal Division, where he managed and supervised 470 attorneys. Mr. Campbell also served as an ex officio Commissioner on the United States Sentencing Commission from October 2006 to June 2007. During his career in the Department of Justice, Mr. Campbell has lectured extensively on topics of interest to law enforcement and has been a member of numerous panels and training programs. He has also received several awards, such as the Attorney General’s Award for Exceptional Service (2006), the Director’s Award for Superior Performance as an Assistant United States Attorney (2000 and 1998), and the Federal Law Enforcement Foundation’s EDNY Prosecutor of the Year Award (1999). Mr. Campbell received his bachelor’s degree from Yale University and his law degree from the University of Chicago Law School.
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