A former federal judge who was arrested last month on federal gun and drug charges has pleaded guilty to possession of controlled substances and conversion of government property, Justice Department said Friday.

Jack T. Camp, the former chief judge of the Northern District of Georgia, allegedly sought to buy drugs for a stripper who was an FBI informant. He pleaded guilty to two counts of possession and one count of conversion of government property. His sentencing is scheduled for March 2011.

Deborah Sue Mayer and Tracee Joy Plowell from the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section prosecuted the case for the government. Mayer, a former Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Eastern District of New York, has also worked on the probe of Nevada Republican Sen. John Ensign. Plowell previously served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Eastern District of Tennessee and in the Executive Office of United States Attorneys.

Conservatives are attacking a recent Department of Justice Inspector General audit of U.S. Attorney travel expenses, calling it politically motivated.

The right-leaning Daily Caller political website interviewed former Pittsburgh U.S. Attorney Mary Beth Buchanan, who said the report is inaccurate and demanded an apology from the Justice Department. The website also identified the previously anonymous author of the report, Maura Lee, and quoted a controversial former George W. Bush administration Civil Rights Division official denigrating her work. (Inspector General’s reports do not list individual authors and instead are issued under the auspices of the IG’s office.)

Former Justice Department official Hans Von Spakovsky, whose work in the Civil Rights Division during the Bush administration also came under critical review by the Inspector General’s office and some career prosecutors, called Lee “one of the most belligerent, unprofessional lawyers” he had ever met.

“She was one of the most partisan career people I ever met,” von Spakovsky told the website.

The report in question described five unnamed  Bush administration U.S. Attorneys who “routinely exceeded the government rate [for lodging], by large amounts, with insufficient, inaccurate, or no justification.” Several of those U.S. Attorneys subsequently were identified in the media, including rising GOP political star Chris Christie, now the governor of New Jersey.

Buchanan, who served as U.S. Attorney in Western Pennsylvania from 2001 to 2009, was “U.S. Attorney B” in the report. According to the report, she paid more than the government rate 11 times at upscale hotels in D.C., overspending about $4,200.

Buchanan did not dispute the figure, but told the website the report contained several inaccuracies. Buchanan said she did not blame her assistant for not getting the government rate at hotels, and that she fully cooperated with the inquiries from the Inspector General’s office. She also took issue with the report for not noting that she also served as acting director for the DOJ’s Office on Violence Against Women, which necessitated frequent trips to Washington.

“Any instance in which the investigator could characterize something in a negative light, she did,” Buchanan said. “There was no attempt to write a factual report … it’s something I’ve never seen in my 22 years with the Justice Department.”

President Barack Obama nominated Wednesday two former prosecutors to be federal judges.

Vincent Briccetti (Briccetti, Calhoun & Lawrence)

Vincent L. Briccetti is nominated to a seat on the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. A partner in the law firm of Briccetti, Calhoun & Lawrence, LLP, in White Plains, N.Y., Briccetti previously served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Southern District from 1985 to 1989.

Obama also nominated Sara Lynn Darrow to be a U.S. District judge in the Central District of Illinois. Darrow is currently an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Central District, where she is chief of the violent crimes section. She joined the U.S. Attorney’s office in 2003 after four years with the Henry County State’s Attorney’s Office in Cambridge, Ill.

President Barack Obama nominated an attorney with the Oregon Department of Justice to serve as the state’s top federal prosecutor, the White House said Wednesday.

Amanda Marshall (facebook)

S. Amanda Marshall, the top lawyer in the Child Advocacy Section of the state DOJ, is nominated to the Oregon U.S. Attorney post. Marshall was previously the Assistant Attorney in charge of the section, and an Assistant state Attorney General. From 1996 to 2001, Marshall served as a deputy district attorney for Coos County, Ore.

If confirmed, Marshall would replace interim U.S. Attorney Dwight C. Holton. Bush U.S. Attorney Karin Immergut resigned in July 2009 and later became a state judge.

Obama has nominated 78 U.S. Attorneys, 72 of whom have won Senate confirmation. The Senate Judiciary Committee is expected to consider three of the nominees at its hearing tomorrow.

The Office of Tribal Justice is now its own, stand-alone component at the Justice Department, Attorney General Eric Holder announced Wednesday.

The office was established in 1995 as part of the Office of the Deputy Attorney General. In July, President Barack Obama signed into law the Tribal Law and Order Act of 2010, which permitted the DOJ to establish the office as a distinct component of the department.

“In the coming years, OTJ will play an important role in continuing the critical dialogue between the department and tribal governments on matters including public safety,” Holder said in a statement. “The establishment of OTJ as a permanent component in the department has been a priority for me and this administration, and it is a critical step in our work to improve coordination and collaboration with tribal communities.”

The office will be headed by director Tracy Toulou, and have a staff of two deputy directors and a special assistant on detail from other Justice Department components. According to the Justice Department, the fiscal 2011 budget has requested funds to hire additional staff for the newly established office. Prior to his position with the Office of Tribal Justice, Toulou served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in Montana and as an attorney in the DOJ’s Criminal Division.

Four student aid U.S. lenders will shell out $57 million to settle allegations they bilked the Department of Education out of millions of dollars by improperly using a loan subsidy, the Justice Department said Wednesday.

According to the complaint, the lenders — Nelnet Inc.; Southwest Student Services Corp., a subsidiary of Sallie Mae; Brazos Higher Education Authority, and Panhandle Plains Higher Education Authority – improperly obtained payments through a federal interest rate subsidy that was intended for a limited class of student loans.

The False Claims Act case was filed in the Eastern District of Virginia in 2007 by Jonathan Oberg, a former Department of Education researcher who retired from the agency in 2005. The Justice Department chose not to intervene in the case, but provided assistance to Oberg, who will take home $16.65 million from the settlements.

Jonathan Oberg (CSPAN)

Justice Department spokesman Charles Miller referred all questions on the settlement to one of Oberg’s lawyers, Michael Sturm of  Wiley Rein LLP. Sturm declined to comment.

Oberg’s attempts to stop the misuse of the loan subsidy date back as far as 2000, according to a 2007 New York Times article.

While a researcher for the Education Department, Oberg reviewed government filings by student lenders and discovered that the companies were claiming an increasing amount of subsidies. According to a 2006 audit conducted by the Education Department’s Inspector General, Nelnet Inc. — one of the country’s largest student lenders  — implemented a new accounting process that allowed it to claim subsidies on $3.66 billion in loans in 2004, up from only $551 million in loans that qualified for the subsidy the year before.

In 2003, Oberg notified the Inspector General’s office and his supervisors, and was told not to pursue the line of research. He later retired, but remained interested in the issue. In the 2006 audit, the department’s Inspector General recommended that agency officials seek the return of $287 million that Nelnet acquired through the loan subsidies. Months later, the Department of Education reached an agreement with Nelnet that required the company to pay back the money and stop using the subsidy.

Oberg later filed the qui tam suit against 10 student aid lenders for their improper use of the subsidy. Bert Rein, a founding partner at Wiley Rein, told the Lincoln Journal-Star in Nebraska last year that Oberg filed the suit because he was dissatisfied with how the Department of Education handled the subsidy issue, particularly the department’s settlement with Nelnet.

In August, the judge in the case, Magistrate Judge John F. Anderson, ordered the companies to enter settlement talks after one of the defendants — Brazos — reached an agreement to settle. A week later, the judge canceled the planned trial, and Nelnet announced it also reached a settlement agreement.

On Wednesday, the court entered a final judgment by consent against a fifth defendant — Student Loan Finance Corp. and its subsidiary Education Loans Inc.  Under the judgment, the company will pay the Justice Department $2.5 million, with $500,000 going to Oberg. Because of the company’s current financial situation, the Justice Department will hold off on collecting the money pending further analysis.

Over the past several years, the Justice Department has stepped into more False Claims Act cases. In fiscal 2010, which ended in September, the DOJ brought in more than $3 billion from false claims suits. In June, Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Division Tony West said the Justice Department has taken in about $24 billion since the law was enacted in 1986.

Curiouser and curiouser.

On Monday, National Public Radio reported that the lawyer selected by a federal judge to look into the botched Stevens prosecution, Henry Schuelke III, would not recommend criminal charges against the prosecutors. Now, the Associated Press is reporting that may not be the case.

According to an AP story filed late Tuesday, the Justice Department’s internal watchdog, the Office of Professional Responsibility, has found that two of the prosecutors and an FBI agent committed misconduct.

A draft of OPR’s report says that Assistant U.S. Attorneys Joseph Bottini and James Goeke, and FBI agent Mary Beth Kepner committed misconduct for failing to turn over evidence to Stevens defense, the AP said. The findings are not yet final, and the report clears several other attorneys — including lead prosecutor Brenda K. Morris and former Public Integrity Section chief William Welch — of misconduct allegations.

From here the AP and NPR diverge. Monday’s NPR report said Schuelke had decided against criminal charges and planned to release a report saying as much. But according to the AP story, Schuelke has not yet made a final decision on whether charges are warranted nor has he decided whether to issue a public, written report.

The AP also confirmed that no report has been given to the judge in the case, U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan.

Former lobbyist Kevin Ring was found guilty Monday of conspiracy, providing illegal gratuities and honest services wire fraud, a big win for Justice Department in the wake of a Supreme Court case that severely limited how prosecutors can use the honest services fraud statute.

Ring, a former colleague of convicted influence peddler Jack Abramoff, was accused of offering free event tickets and meals to 11 public officials in exchange for earmarks and other “official actions.” His first trial year ago ended in a hung jury.

“For years, this team of lobbyists schemed to corrupt public officials, and, because of their actions, Americans were denied the honest services of public servants,” Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Mythili Raman of the Criminal Division said in a statement. “Through the continued vigilance of our prosecutors and our law enforcement partners, we are committed to bringing to justice those who seek to corrupt our democratic process.”

Kevin Ring worked with lobbyist Jack Abramoff in the early 2000s. (Getty Images)

In July, the Supreme Court ruled in Skilling v. United States that prosecutors can only use the honest services law in strict cases of bribery and kickbacks. In the past, prosecutors took a more expansive view of the law, with some alleging they used the statute as a “catch-all” tool to prosecute white collar crime.

With the more restrictive criteria, prosecutors had to prove that Ring and the public officials he interacted with violated their “lawful duty” to the public. At trial, prosecutors argued that Ring and the other lobbyists at his firm had an explicit agreement that they would provide contributions to members of Congress in exchange for official actions. Ring’s lawyers said he was a skilled lobbyist who used legal — if at times unseemly — methods to advance his clients’ interests.

The jury ultimately agreed with prosecutors, finding that gifts Ring provided to Robert Coughlin, a former Justice Department official; John Albaugh, the former chief of staff to Rep. Ernest Istook, a former senior member of the House Appropriations Committee; and former Rep. John Doolittle (R-Calif.), violated the law. He was acquitted on three other charges.

“There is a right way to do it and a wrong way to do it,” said Tom Bandy, one of the jurors, after the verdict was announced.

Even without the Skilling decision, prosecutors faced a series of setbacks in the case. Albaugh testified in the first trial that he used his position to benefit clients of Abramoff’s firm because lobbyists gave him free meals and event tickets.

In September, Albaugh changed his testimony, telling prosecutors he would not have taken actions of behalf of Ring and Abramoff’s clients if the lobbyists had not given campaign contributions to his boss.

The judge in the case, District Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle, also chided prosecutors for some of their arguments at trial, at one point telling lead prosecutor Nathaniel Edmonds that he had “crossed the line of professional responsibility” for hinting he had evidence that did not exist.

Andrew Ramonas contributed reporting.

This story has been updated.

In its annual review of challenges facing the Justice Department, the DOJ’s Inspector General took a swipe at its fellow watchdog and arch-rival, the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility.

In the report issued Monday, the Inspector General urged OPR — the branch of DOJ charged with investigating allegations of attorney misconduct — to increase its transparency in an effort to improve the Justice Department’s public image.

The remarks came in a section on restoring confidence in the DOJ in the wake of several high-profile scandals, including the politicized hiring that occurred during the Bush administration and concerns about prosecutor misconduct after the botched prosecution of former Sen. Ted Stevens (R). The Inspector General included a similar section on the DOJ’s image in last year’s report, but did not call then for changes to OPR.

Both the Inspector General’s office and OPR investigate the Justice Department’s inner workings and occasionally collaborate on probes. But the two divisions have long been at odds over jurisdiction.

The Inspector General’s office is an independent entity, with limited oversight by Congress and the executive branch. It has the authority to issue subpoenas to compel testimony or documents for investigations, but it is specifically prohibited from investigating the department’s lawyers for misconduct related to their official duties. Only OPR — which answers to the Justice Department’s political leaders — can investigate attorneys or other DOJ employees for misconduct. OPR does not have the ability to issue subpoenas and the results of investigations are not usually made public.

For years, the Justice Department’s Inspectors General, including the current one, Glenn Fine, have pushed for the IG to take over OPR’s responsibilities.

In Monday’s report, the Inspector General urged OPR to provide more public information on its reviews, noting that the office only gives out limited details on the cases and OPR’s conclusions.

“The Acting Deputy Attorney General recently stated that the Attorney General has directed the Department ‘to work on finding ways to make more information available to the public about these matters,’” the Inspector General said. “We believe this is one important step. However, we believe that the timeliness and transparency of the Department’s internal processes for addressing allegations of prosecutorial misconduct need improvement to increase public confidence in the Department’s ability to address such allegations.”

From the report:

We believe the Department faces additional challenges in ensuring that it has an adequate process to investigate and hold accountable any Department attorneys who commit professional misconduct. The transparency, effectiveness, and timeliness of the Department’s internal process to address allegations of prosecutorial misconduct have been questioned, and we believe the Department should take action to improve the transparency of that process. For example, OPR, the internal entity that investigates allegations of prosecutorial misconduct by Department attorneys, has taken steps during the past 2 years to address the backlog in its annual reports and to more promptly post its annual reports containing summaries of its investigations of allegations of prosecutorial misconduct. However, these reports provide only limited details on the cases and the basis of OPR’s conclusions. The Acting Deputy Attorney General recently stated that the Attorney General has directed the Department “to work on finding ways to make more information available to the public about these matters.” We believe this is one important step. However, we believe that the timeliness and transparency of the Department’s internal processes for addressing allegations of prosecutorial misconduct need improvement to increase public confidence in the Department’s ability to address such allegations.