On his first day as U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Virginia, Todd Gilbert said it’s a job he has long desired.
Although Gilbert has held other high-profile positions as a Virginia lawmaker and speaker of the House of Delegates, he still remembers fondly his previous tenure as an assistant commonwealth’s attorney in several jurisdictions.
“I bring to this job truly the heart of a prosecutor,” he said in an interview July 14 at the U.S. attorney’s Roanoke office, several hours after he was sworn in by Judge Thomas Cullen.
“Even though I’ve been out of the game for a while,” he said of prosecuting crimes, first in Lynchburg and later in the Shenandoah Valley he calls home, “I feel like I’ve been waiting for the opportunity to do that again.”
“I never imagined that it would be something as impactful as the U.S. attorney, but I’m grateful for the opportunity the president has given me,” he said.
Three weeks after he was nominated by President Donald Trump, and several days after his appointment by Attorney General Pam Bondi, Gilbert talked about his plans for the next four years.
“My main priority is not to mess up a good thing,” he said. “I realize that this is a good office, and by all accounts, they do a great job in their mission to make western Virginia a safer place.”
Gilbert is in the process of meeting assistant U.S. attorneys and staff members in the office, some of whom have worked through five or six presidential administrations.
“They’re the constant heroes; we’re just here temporarily,” he said of the four-year lifespans of most U.S. attorneys.
As he makes the transition from a staunch Republican lawmaker to a federal prosecutor, Gilbert said he will be subject to “more strict rules about politics and the ability to engage therein."
"Just for me personally, it’s going to be an interesting transition to have to gear down a little bit," he said.
Gilbert listed as priorities some of the traditional duties of his job — prosecuting major drug cases, white-collar crime, fraud, human trafficking, child exploitation — while not mentioning some of Trump’s more controversial views about a “weaponized” federal criminal justice system.
“But I’m perfectly happy with the understanding that it’s my job to implement Department of Justice polices in the Western District of Virginia,” he added.
Earlier this year, Gilbert announced his plans to run for reelection to represent the 33rd District, which consists of Page and Shenandoah counties and parts of Rockingham and Warren counties.
But after what he has called “the opportunity of lifetime” became a reality with his appointment as U.S. attorney, Gilbert resigned from his seat in the General Assembly effective 7 a.m. July 14.
His appointment by Bondi was on an interim basis; Gilbert still must be confirmed by the U.S. Senate. University of Richmond law professor Carl Tobias said he thinks that’s “as good as a done deal,” given Gilbert’s solid reputation and his support by Virginia’s two U.S. senators, both Democrats.
Gilbert spent 14 years as a state prosecutor in four jurisdictions — the city of Lynchburg and the counties of Frederick, Shenandoah and Warren — and later defended criminal and traffic charges from a private practice in Woodstock, which he recently shut down.
A resident of Mt. Jackson, Gilbert said he plans to spend a lot of time on the road to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Roanoke, about two hours away, and its other locations in Abingdon and Charlottesville.
The Western District is a swath of Virginia that stretches from the Lynchburg region to the western tip of the state in Lee County, and it extends all the way north to Winchester.
Gilbert was first elected to the General Assembly in 2005. He served as speaker of the House from 2022 through 2023, and as both the majority and minority leader for Republicans.
Throughout his legislative tenure, Gilbert said he remained closely involved with criminal justice by serving on the Virginia Crime Commission, the state’s sentencing commission, and in other similar roles.
“I’ve had a long tenure of focusing on criminal justice and public safety issues,” he said, “even when I wasn’t doing that as my day job.”
Source: www.dailyprogress.com