Jaquith cleared for federal judgeship

U.S. Attorney Grant Jaquith, the top federal prosecutor in the Capital Region and 32 upstate counties, has been confirmed by the U.S. Senate to serve as a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for Veteran Claims.

Jaquith, who has led the U.S. attorney’s office for the Northern District of New York since July 2017, will serve a 15-year term as one of the seven judges on the veterans’ court. President Donald Trump nominated Jaquith, a former Army colonel, for the judgeship last August.

The confirmation will mark the end of Jaquith’s 31-year career as a prosecutor in the Northern District, which encompasses a wide area that includes Binghamton, Syracuse, the Catskills and up to the Canadian border.

“Grant Jaquith will be an outstanding federal judge. He is experienced, sensible, fair and hardworking; one of the finest lawyers I have ever met in over three decades of practicing law,” said Richard Hartunian, who preceded Jaquith as U.S. attorney. Jaquith served as Hartunian’s first assistant since 2010.

Jaquith ran the office after Hartunian left in June 2017. In January 2018, then-u.s. Attorney General Jeff Sessions said Jaquith would remain in the role and praised Jaquith for a “well-deserved reputation for determination and toughness as an attorney.”

The Veterans Claims court, based in Washington D.C., and part of the U.S. judiciary, can meet anywhere in the country. Jaquith served from 1982 to 2011 in the Army’s corps of judge advocate general. He has also served as a staff judge advocate, circuit judge and chief of military law.

A vacancy on the Veterans Claims court opened with the retirement of Robert N. Davis, a former chief judge of the court.