The U.S. Attorneys Office of the Eastern District of New York welcomed Breon Peace as U.S. Attorney during a swearing-in ceremony led by Chief District Judge Margo K. Brodie at the Brooklyn federal courthouse on Friday.
President Joe Biden appointed Peace to the position, in which he leads a staff of about 163 assistant federal attorneys responsible for all federal criminal and civil cases throughout Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island, Nassau, and Suffolk.
“I look forward to leading the office’s incredibly talented and dedicated women and men in addressing present and future challenges in the Eastern District,” Peace said. “We will continue to work tirelessly with our law enforcement partners to pursue equal justice under the law, and protect and serve the people of the district. I am eager to get to work.”
Peace previously practiced law as a partner at Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP in New York City, where he worked for the past 25 years and was a member of the firm’s white collar defense and investigations and litigations groups. Peace has additional experience serving as a law clerk and an assistant attorney in the eastern district.
Peace is also an acting professor of clinical law at New York University School of Law, where he trained aspiring prosecutors in the 2002-2003 academic year. In 2007, he became the first African American man to be named partner at Cleary.
In 2012, Peace was appointed to a high-profile case brought against the New York City Fire Department alleging discrimination on the basis of race and national origin in hiring Black and Hispanic firefighters.
Peace has also maintained an active pro bono practice for clients with criminal, immigration, human trafficking, and civil rights cases. Notably, he led the team of lawyers that in 2016 won dismissal of the indictment of a man who had been wrongly convicted of murder, rape, and robbery in 1981 and spent almost 30 years in prison.
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