Biden taps Chung for U.S. attorney post

President Joe Biden has nominated Cindy Chung, an assistant U.S. attorney in Pittsburgh since 2014, as the next U. S. attorney for Western Pennsylvania.

The U.S. Senate must now confirm her appointment.

Stephen Kaufman, a longtime assistant U.S. attorney, has been the acting U.S. attorney since the departure of Scott Brady following Donald Trump’s election loss.

Ms. Chung joined the staff in 2014 and has held various leadership roles, including acting deputy chief of the violent crimes section at various times from 2015 to 2017 and deputy chief of the major crimes section from 2018 to 2020.

Before she came to Pittsburgh, Ms. Chung was a trial lawyer in the criminal section of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division.

Prior to that she was an assistant district attorney in Manhattan from 2003 to 2007 and then served as investigative counsel in the official corruption unit from 2007 to 2009.

She was a clerk for U.S. District Judge Myron Thompson in the Middle District of Alabama from 2002 to 2003.

Ms. Chung received her undergraduate degree from Yale in 1997 and her law degree at Columbia Law School in 2002.

In Pittsburgh, she has handled a variety of cases. One of her most notable prosecutions in Pittsburgh was the government’s civil rights case against former Pittsburgh police Sgt. Stephen Matakovich, accused of assaulting a drunk man outside Heinz Field in 2015 and falsifying a report to justify it.

Matakovich was convicted of the assault but acquitted of falsifying the report.