The Senate confirmed five former and current prosecutors for federal judgeships over the weekend, following the confirmation last Thursday of four other new judges. The recent actions break a logjam of nominees that Democrats had complained were being held up by Senate Republican objections.

In the action over the weekend:

• Raymond Joseph Lohier Jr. was confirmed as a member of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit. Lohier is the chief of the securities and commodities fraud task force in the criminal division for the U.S. Attorney’s office in the Southern District of New York. He has also served as deputy chief and chief of the office’s narcotics unit and deputy chief of the securities and commodities fraud task force during his 10 years at the office. Read more about him here.
• Carlton W. Reeves was confirmed as a U.S.  District Judge for the Southern District of Mississippi. Reeves worked in the district’s U.S. Attorney office from 1995 to 2001. He served as chief of the civil division and district election officer. Read more about him here.
• Edmond E-Min Chang was confirmed as a U.S. District Judge for the Northern District of Illinois. He has been an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the district since 1999. He has served as chief of appeals in the criminal division and deputy chief of the general crimes division. Read more about him here.
• Ellen Lipton Hollander was confirmed as a U.S. District Judge for Maryland. She worked as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in Baltimore from 1979 to 1983. Read more about her here.
• Denise Jefferson Casper was confirmed as a U.S. District Judge for Massachusetts. She worked as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in Boston from 1999 to 2005. Read more about her here.

Raymond Lohier (New York University)

Carlton W. Reeves (Pigott Reeves Johnston)

Ellen Lipton Hollander (gov)

Denise Casper (Boston Bar Association)

A three-judge panel on Thursday heard arguments about whether an Assistant U.S. Attorney in Boston should be penalized over accusations that he withheld exculpatory evidence, The Blog of Legal Times reported.

U.S. District Chief Judge Mark L. Wolf ordered the release of two Mafia members in 2003 and 2005 after finding that Jeffrey Auerhahn had improperly, and possibly illegally, failed to disclose key information to defense lawyers.

Former Massachusetts U.S. Attorney Michael Sullivan on Wednesday was the target of a vitriolic diatribe from a Boston city council member who was thrown out of office that day, The Boston Globe reported.

Chuck Turner (Facebook)

Chuck Turner, who was expelled by an 11-1 city council vote, said Sullivan brought a corruption case against him because he is black. A federal jury in October found Turner guilty on charges that he took a bribe in his district office in 2007 and lied to the FBI about the transaction. His sentencing is scheduled for Jan. 25.

Turner likened the struggle he and Boston’s blacks face to the fight former Mayor James Curley and the Irish led against the city’s establishment.

“The purpose was to take us down because they saw the power of communities of color rising just like the Irish power rose,’’ Turner said, according to the newspaper. “Mayor Curley would be ashamed of Michael Sullivan as an Irishman for doing this to black people.’’

Michael Sullivan (The Ashcroft Group LLC)

Sullivan, who served as U.S. Attorney from 2001 to 2009, said Turner’s accusations are “wild and false.” He defended the successful prosecution of Turner, saying the expelled councilman didn’t live up to his obligations as an elected official.

“He has certainly let his constituents down,” said Sullivan, a partner at The Ashcroft Group LLC in Boston.

The Massachusetts U.S. Attorney’s office will have a dedicated team to fight hate crimes, U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz announced Tuesday.

Carmen Ortiz (DOJ)

Assistant U.S. Attorneys Theodore Merritt of the Public Corruption and Special Prosecutions Unit and Sonya Rao of the Civil Division will lead the Civil Rights Enforcement Team as it handles civil rights cases and works with law enforcement agencies to combat hate crimes.

“Vigorously enforcing federal civil rights laws is a top priority,â€� Ortiz said in a statement. “The Civil Rights Enforcement Team will ensure a level playing field, advancing equal opportunity and protecting the rights of Massachusetts residents. Its primary mission is to restore a fair and aggressive philosophy towards enforcement, ensuring that our most critical and treasured laws continue to fulfill their purpose.”

Read more about the team here.

Carmen Ortiz (DOJ)

Terrorism and national security are the priorities of Carmen Ortiz, the new Massachusetts U.S. Attorney said in a recent interview with The Patriot Ledger.

In addition, Ortiz, who took office last Nov. 9 (her formal swearing-in ceremony was Jan. 11), said her office will “continue to build on what we’ve done in the past.” The office also will make financial fraud, political corruption and gun and gang violence priorities, Ortiz told the newspaper.

Since Ortiz took office, she has made some staff changes and has shifted some of the office’s priorities. Even though she’s taking charge and making the office her own, she says she is still overwhelmed by the “tremendous amount of pride and accomplishment” that comes along with being the state’s first Hispanic and female U.S. Attorney.

“I think it’s really important for the leaders in government or private industry to truly represent the different nationalities and groups that form a community and a state. I felt very humbled to be selected. It meant a lot to my family.”

Ortiz found out about her nomination from the late Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.). Learning of her impending nomination was “very exciting,” Ortiz told The Patriot Ledger, adding that it was “very touching” to hear the news from Kennedy. “That meant a lot to me.”

A sense of pride has long been important to Ortiz who “knew all along [she] wanted to be a lawyer.”

“I never thought about doing anything else. Maybe it was watching trials on TV, and thinking it was exciting to be in front of a jury arguing a case. That fascinated me. (At George Washington University Law School) I realized it wasn’t just presenting the case. It was – and this is why I wanted to primarily be a prosecutor – that sense of being able to do justice, of being able to work with victims and then help make people whole, people who had suffered a great tragedy. But also, being a prosecutor was a way of ensuring that the law was abided by, not just by citizens you would investigate and prosecute, but (also) by law enforcement that you would work with as well.”

The former Massachusetts U.S. Attorney told Main Justice today that he doesn’t regret his decision not to run for the Senate seat of the late Sen. Edward Kennedy (D).

Michael Sullivan (The Ashcroft Group)

Michael Sullivan, who served as U.S. Attorney under the Bush administration from 2001 to 2009, considered a run for the seat that Republican Scott Brown won this week. He decided in October not to launch a bid for the Republican nomination because he wanted to spend more time with his family, including his son who is in high school.

“I have no regrets at all because Brown won,” Sullivan told Main Justice. “I think the world of Brown.”

He said he might have had “some regrets” if the election had been closer. But Brown received 52 percent of the vote to beat out Democrat Martha Coakley, who had 47 percent of the vote. Democrats have held the seat for more than 50 years.

Sullivan, who is a partner at The Ashcroft Group, said he believes that he could have won the seat too and isn’t ruling out a run for elected office in the future.

“I would certainly consider it,” the former U.S. Attorney said. He previously served in the Massachusetts House of Representatives and as a county district attorney. Read his full bio here.

A Massachusetts prosecutor is slated to succeed a retiring magistrate judge on the state’s U.S. District Court, The Boston Globe reported.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Jennifer Boal, an almost 20-year veteran of the Justice Department, is the chief of her office’s civil division. She will replace Magistrate Judge Joyce London Alexander.

“Ms. Boal emerged from a very impressive field of well-qualified candidates,” Chief Judge Mark L. Wolf said in a statement. “She was distinguished by her demonstrated dedication to the administration of justice, and by the skill and fine judgment she displayed in her many cases before the judges who selected her.”

Wolf has been critical of another prosecutor in the Boston-based U.S. Attorney’s office who Wolf said had withheld evidence that could have been helpful to a defendant in a gun case. Earlier this month, Wolf used the installation ceremony of new U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz to question the office’s priorities.

The chief judge of the U.S. District Court in Massachusetts used the investiture ceremony of Boston-based U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz on Monday to press prosecutors about their priorities, The National Law Journal reported today.

Mark Wolf (Gov)

With Attorney General Eric Holder in attendance, Chief Judge Mark Wolf asked Ortiz whether her staff is “being put to their highest and best use when two-thirds of the defendants in this federal district court are indigent and must have Criminal Justice Act counsel,” according to the NLJ.

Wolf has been vocal about what he sees prosecutorial misconduct in the district, and the gun and drug cases that Bush U.S. Attorney Michael Sullivan tried in district court, The NLJ said.

“I hope as you develop the priorities for the performance of your office you will consider questions like” those, Wolf said at the ceremony, according to The NLJ.

Ortiz, the state’s first Hispanic and female U.S. Attorney, downplayed the judge’s remarks in a statement to the NLJ. Though the U.S. Attorney said at the ceremony that fighting terrorism is her “first priority,” she also said her office will focus its attention on crimes ranging from human trafficking to environmental crimes, The NLJ said.

Carmen Ortiz (DOJ)

“I believe our Assistant United States Attorneys will be put to their highest and best use regardless of who represents the defendants,” Ortiz said in the statement. “We will bring cases based on where the evidence takes us, not based on who is paying the bill.”

We reported in May that Wolf rebuked Massachusetts Assistant US Attorney Suzanne Sullivan for withholding evidence that could have helped a defendant in a gun case.

Wolf also wrote a letter to Holder in April expressing his “renewed hopeâ€� that the Attorney General would address judges’ concerns about prosecutors’ conduct. Then-Attorneys General Alberto Gonzales and Michael Mukasey did not respond to similar letters from Wolf.

Wolf added in the letter that U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan’s decision to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the mishandling of the Sen. Ted Stevens public corruption case “confirms that other judges share my concern.�

Attorney General Eric Holder dropped by Boston yesterday to see an old friend sworn in as U.S. Attorney.

Carmen Ortiz (DOJ)

Massachusetts U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz first met Holder three decades ago when she was a student at George Washington University Law School interning at the Justice Department Public Integrity Section, the Boston Globe reported. Holder was then a trial lawyer in the section.

“Have we come a long way, huh?” Ortiz, the state’s first Hispanic and female U.S. Attorney said to Holder, the country’s first black Attorney General, according to the newspaper.

Holder praised Ortiz as a natural leader and well-rounded lawyer, The Globe said.

“Latinas have done pretty well over the last few months, and deservedly so,” the Attorney General said in an apparent reference to Justice Sonia Sotomayor, according to the newspaper.

Ortiz told hundreds of supporters and dignitaries packed into a John Joseph Moakley Courthouse courtroom that fighting terrorism is her “first priority,” according to The Globe. She also let the crowd know that she became engaged New Year’s Day to Thomas Dolan, who works at IBM, The Globe said.

Ortiz was officially sworn in on Nov. 9, a few days after the Senate confirmed her to succeed Michael Sullivan, who was the Bush administration’s top federal prosecutor in Boston. U.S. Attorneys often have a later ceremonial investiture with local, state and federal leaders in attendance. Ortiz’s swearing was the seventh such ceremony attended by Holder since he became Attorney General.

Carmen Ortiz (Adelphi University)

The Massachusetts U.S. Attorney filled several top posts in her office, the Boston Business Journal reported last night.

U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz, who was sworn in last November, named leaders to the Boston-based office’s criminal division and major crimes unit, according to the Journal. She also named an Assistant U.S. Attorney to the recently created counsel to the U.S. Attorney post, the publication said.

According to the Journal, the new leaders are:

• James F. Lang, who will lead the office’s criminal division. He previously served as the acting deputy chief of the criminal division. Lang has been with the office since 1993.

• John T. McNeil, who will be the deputy chief of the criminal division. He previously was an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the office’s public corruption and special prosecutions unit. McNeil joined the office in 1999.

• Nadine Pellegrini, who will lead the major crimes unit. She previously served as the acting head of the unit. Pellegrini has been with the office since 1991.

• James B. Farmer, who will be the counsel to the U.S. Attorney. He will also continue to lead the office’s anti-terrorism and national security unit. Farmer joined the office in 1985.