Hiland takes formal oath as U.S. attorney
After just more than three months on the job, Cody Hiland was formally sworn in Friday as the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas in a courthouse ceremony attended by dozens of supporters, including many from Faulkner County, for which he served as prosecuting attorney for two four-year terms.
Hiland, 45, quietly took the oath of office Oct. 10 after the U.S. Senate confirmed him Sept. 28 as President Donald Trump’s nominee for the position.
The Conway native went from being the elected prosecuting attorney for the 20th Judicial Circuit, which includes Faulkner, Van Buren and Searcy counties, to being the chief federal law enforcement official in the state’s Eastern District, which includes 41 counties, at the recommendation of Arkansas’ two U.S. senators, John Boozman of Rogers and Tom Cotton of Dardanelle, both Republicans.
Boozman was among those who traveled to Little Rock, where the Eastern District is headquartered, to welcome Hiland, who the senator said “has the ability to bring everybody together.”
Hiland’s ability to decide when to bring charges against someone and, just as importantly, when not to bring charges, was highlighted by several speakers, beginning with Judge Troy Braswell of the 20th Judicial
Circuit, a former deputy prosecutor under Hiland.
Braswell credited Hiland for reviving a 10-year-old unsolved murder investigation, leading to a conviction, and for invigorating the office’s victim-witness program.
Upon accepting the oath of office from Chief U.S. District Judge Brian Miller while surrounded by wife Jana, daughters Claire and Caitlyn, and sons John Reagan and Ethan, Hiland called his job “a sober mission.”
“My goal for this office is simple in concept yet pro-candidates
found in impact,” he said. “It is to seek justice, not merely to convict. … I understand I am merely a trustee of this office.”
Hiland paused to honor his father, the late Jim Hiland, who was buried just more than a week earlier after a lengthy battle with cancer, calling him a role model and “a proud, bold, fierce man” who was his Little League coach, as well as “our rock, our leader, our handyman — he literally built our home.”
Steve Goode, a friend who is a member of the Faulkner County Quorum Court and executive director of the Arkansas Tobacco Control
board, described Hiland as decisive, as well as passionate about God, family, football and the law.
“There will be no straddling the fence with Cody Hiland,” Goode said. “A strike will be a strike, and a ball will be a ball.”
Hiland, who has lived in Arkansas his entire life, received his law degree from the William H. Bowen School of Law in Little Rock and his undergraduate degree from the University of Central Arkansas.
Before being elected in 2010 and again in 2014 as prosecuting attorney, he was a partner at the Hiland, Thomas & Cox law firm.
Before that, he was a staff attorney at the Arkansas Public Service Commission, program director for the Arkansas Transitional Employment Board and a legislative liaison and aide to Gov. Mike Huckabee.