Less that two months after being sworn in as the new U.S. attorney for the Western District of Virginia, Todd Gilbert is out.
Gilbert resigned effective 5 p.m. Wednesday, according to Brian McGinn, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
Robert Tracci, an assistant Virginia attorney general and former commonwealth’s attorney in Charlottesville, has been named acting U.S. attorney, McGinn said. No additional details were immediately available.
Gilbert, a former Shenandoah Valley state lawmaker and Republican majority leader of the Virginia House of Delegates, was appointed interim U.S. attorney on July 14 by Attorney General Pam Bondi.
He was nominated for the position, which requires confirmation by the U.S. Senate, by President Donald Trump.
Gilbert previously called the job a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. “I bring to this job truly the heart of a prosecutor,” he said in an interview on his first day at work in the Roanoke office.
The Roanoke Times’ efforts to reach him after the news first broke were unsuccessful.
Gilbert commented on his departure on X, however, not with a statement but with a well-known internet meme. It shows Will Ferrell’s character from the 2004 film “Anchorman” saying, “Boy, that escalated quickly.”
Tracci, who the Times also could not be reach, was one of two candidates — the other being Gilbert — recommended to Trump earlier this year by Virginia’s two U.S. senators, Democrats Mark Warner and Tim Kaine.
News of Gilbert’s sudden departure came as a surprise to attorneys in the district, which stretches from Lynchburg to the western tip of the state in Lee County and extends all the way north to Winchester.
“It’s extraordinary and probably unprecedented,” said Paul Beers, a Roanoke attorney who has represented criminal defendants in the Western District for nearly 40 years. Beers also called it “unsettling.”
Earlier this year, Gilbert announced his plans to run for reelection to represent the commonwealth’s 33rd District, which consists of Page and Shenandoah counties and parts of Rockingham and Warren counties.
But after his appointment, he resigned from his seat in the General Assembly.
Gilbert, 54, lives in Mount Jackson, a town in the northern part of the Western District.
He 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.
Although Gilbert had yet to be confirmed by the U.S. Senate, University of Richmond law professor Carl Tobias had earlier predicted that was “as good as a done deal” — given his solid reputation and Warner and Kaine’s support from the other side of the aisle.
Source: www.dailyprogress.com
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