Virginia A. Seitz (Duke University, Buffalo Law School) is nominated to be the Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel. She would replace Jonathan Goldman Cedarbaum, who was appointed Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General on July 18, 2010. The office has not had a Senate-confirmed head since 2004.

The following information is from her Senate Judiciary Committee questionnaire.

Her vitals:

• Born in Wilmington, Del., in 1956.
• Her nickname is “Muffy.”
• Earned a philosophy, politics and economics degree from Oxford University in June 1980.
• Has been a partner at Sidley Austin LLP since 1998.
• Worked at Bredhoff & Kaiser, P.L.L.C. from 1987 to 1997. Was an associate from 1987 to 1992 and partner from 1993 to 1997.
• Clerked for U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice William  J. Brennan,  Jr. from 1986 to 1987.
• Clerked for U.S. Court of Appeals Justice Harry T. Edwards in Washington, D.C., from 1985 to 1986.
• Clerked for the Migrant Legal Action Program in Washington during the summer of 1984 and from January 1985 to June 1985.
• Clerked at Allen, Lippes and Shonn PC, in Buffalo, N.Y., from October 1983 to April 1984.
• Was a summer law clerk at the now-defunct Saperstein, Day in Buffalo, in 1982.
• Was a history teacher and field hockey coach at The Park School in Buffalo during the 1980-81 school year.
• Was a National Merit Scholar in 1974.
• Was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University from 1978 to 1980.
• Volunteered during President Barack Obama’s transition in the administrative agency review project, specifically cataloging the status of legal matters involving administrative agencies.

On her Office of Government Ethics filing, Seitz reported her partnership share income from Sidley in 2009 as $562,241 and, for about nine months in 2010, as $338,006.

UPDATE: On her Senate Judiciary Committee financial disclosure, Seitz reported assets valued at $3.9 million, mostly from real estate and cash on hand and in banks, and a $10,529 mortgage for a net worth of about $3.9 million.

Egardo Ramos (Day Pitney)

Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) is recommending a former and a current Department of Justice official for two seats on the federal district court in Manhattan.

Edgardo Ramos is a former Assistant U.S. Attorney in the U.S. Attorney’s office for the Eastern District of New York. He is now a partner at Day Pitney LLP in the firm’s white collar defense and investigations and antitrust practices. In 2009, Connecticut’s two senators, Christopher Dodd (D) and Joseph Lieberman (I) recommended him as one of four candidates to be Connecticut U.S. Attorney, but the White House nominated New Haven lawyer David Fein, who was confirmed.

Katherine Forrest (Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP

Schumer also recommended Katherine Forrest to fill a vacancy on the court. She is a deputy assistant attorney general in the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division. Before she joined the Justice Department in October, Forrest was at Cravath, Swaine & Moore for 20 years, where she focused on antitrust and intellectual property matters  Forrest was on the team of Cravath lawyers that helped United Airlines win antitrust approval for its merger with Continental Airlines Inc.

Schumer is sending his recommendation of Ramos and Forrest to President Barack Obama for potential nomination to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. Schumer called the two “first-rate lawyers who have served at the highest levels of public and private practice,” the the Blog of Legal Times reported Wednesday.

The Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts says the district is in a “judicial emergency� because of seven vacancies. Obama has made other nominations for the court: J. Paul Oetken, a senior vice president an associate general counsel at Cablevision Systems Corp., and Vincent Briccetti of Briccetti, Calhoun & Lawrence in White Plains, N.Y.

Former interim U.S. Attorney Benton Campbell of the Eastern District of New York resigned Monday as a prosecutor in the office to join a national law firm in New York.

Campbell declined to identify the law firm in an interview with Main Justice. But the former leader of the Brooklyn U.S. Attorney’s office said he will start at the firm in February as a partner, handling mostly white-collar criminal matters.

Benton Campbell (DOJ)

He joined the U.S. Attorney’s office in 1994, rising to interim U.S. Attorney in October 2007. The prosecutor held that post until May 2010, when U.S. Attorney Loretta Lynch took office. He then served as a supervisory Assistant U.S. Attorney in the office’s Criminal Division until his resignation.

Nicknamed “Dangerous Opie” for his resemblance to Ron Howard’s character in “The Andy Griffith Show,” Campbell garnered national attention as interim U.S. Attorney for his office’s work on the 2009 New York subway bombing plot case against Najibullah Zazi. But Attorney General Eric Holder accidentally said “Ben Wagner” was the U.S. Attorney on the case during a news conference at Justice Department headquarters. (Wagner is the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of California.)

At the DOJ, Campbell also worked on other high-profile matters, including the Enron case in the 2000s and prosecutions against two Bear Stearns traders, who were acquitted in 2009 of fraud charges.

The former interim U.S. Attorney had been considering a move to the private sector for the last several months. But he told Main Justice that his time at the DOJ was “the single greatest experience of my professional career.”

Google Inc. will bring on the House Judiciary Committee antitrust counsel for the Republicans next month amid government scrutiny of the Internet giant’s proposed merger with a travel data firm.

Stewart Jeffries (Facebook)

Stewart Jeffries will join Google as Competition Policy Counsel on Feb. 7, a spokesman for the company told Main Justice on Friday. Jeffries has been the House Judiciary Committee antitrust counsel for the Republicans since 2007. He previously served as the House Judiciary constitution subcommittee counsel from 2004 to 2006, and as an associate at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP from 2000 to 2003.

“Stewart brings deep experience on competition issues and has respect from both sides of the political aisle,” said Google spokesman Adam Kovacevich. “We’re excited for him to join us.”

A House Judiciary Committee spokeswoman declined to comment to Main Justice.

The Justice Department Antitrust Division is preparing a possible court case to stop Google’s $700 million acquisition of ITA Software Inc., which creates most of the software for online flight ticket sales, The Washington Post reported earlier this month. But the DOJ has not made a decision on whether to block the merger.

The House Judiciary Committee, under Democratic control last year, had its eye on the proposed merger. The panel held a hearing in September on competition in the digital marketplace, examining Google and its proposed merger with ITA. Witnesses at the hearing expressed concern that the Internet giant was stifling competition from smaller companies.

Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), who is now the panel’s chairman, pushed back against the critics at the time.

“Just because a company is big does not mean it is bad,” Smith said, according to The Hill. “Just because competitors complain about a practice does not mean it is anti-competitive.”

Aruna Viswanatha contributed reporting.

FBI disciplinary reports obtained exclusively by CNN describe misconduct by agency supervisors, agents and other employees over the last three years.

Among the more juicy incidents:

• An employee misused his credentials to get into a night club, provided sensitive information to his reporter girlfriend and threatened to release a sex tape after they broke up;
• An employee took his official personnel file from his supervisor’s desk and refused to return it after multiple requests;
• An employee “became preoccupied with a co-worker and, despite clear indications that the co-worker desired only a professional relationship, the employee” continued to try to insert himself into her life;
• An employee was taken to the hospital after an automobile accident and then tried to punch a nurse;
• An employee was asleep on the job and was found to be AWOL on 205 occasions in two years;
• An employee had a sexual relationship with a source in an FBI vehicle;
• An employee used an FBI database to search for “hot” celebrities;
• An employee viewed pornography in his office while masturbating;
• An employee was arrested after being publicly intoxicated at an amusement park and getting into a verbal dispute with teenagers;
• An employee collected money for another employee’s retirement party and kept the money for personal use;
• An employee passed a felony traffic stop and yelled “Rodney King” out his window, lost control of his vehicle and nearly hit a police officer;
• An employee did not follow his supervisor’s instructions and said it was because he had a tendency to “tune out” his supervisor”;
• An employee brought two exotic dancers friends, who were foreign nationals, into FBI space after hours and conducted name checks on them.