Former judge, U.S. attorney named to Ethics Commission
San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera appointed former judge and federal prosecutor Kevin Ryan to the city’s Ethics Commission on Monday.
Ryan, who works as a defense attorney focused on white-collar crime, corporate investigations and commercial litigation, began his legal career in 1985 working as a prosecutor in the Alameda County district attorney’s office.
Ryan joined the bench of the San Francisco Superior Court in 1999, where he became the presiding judge of the court’s criminal division.
He was appointed by President George W. Bush to be the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of California in 2002, where he replaced Robert Mueller, who went on to become the director of the FBI. In his five years as the Northern District’s lead prosecutor, Ryan oversaw several prominent cases, including the BALCO sports steroids scandal and the nation’s first criminal charges of stock options backdating.
In 2007, Ryan became one of nine federal prosecutors who were dismissed by then-U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. Several were believed to have been dismissed for political reasons, but a report from the Justice Department’s inspector general indicated that Ryan’s dismissal was fully justified given the personnel matters that cropped up under his tenure.
Junior prosecutors, the report said, saw Ryan as “retaliatory, explosive, noncommunicative and paranoid.” Ryan did not participate in the Justice Department’s investigation into the dismissals.
Reached for comment Monday, Ryan said he “doesn’t hide” from those events, but declined to comment about them.
Ryan said he’s known Herrera for about 15 years, and the two worked closely on gang cases and other matters. He called the appointment to the Ethics Commission “an honor and a privilege.”
Ryan replaces Herrera’s previous appointment to the commission, Peter Keane, who resigned in February after the panel failed to bring a campaign reform measure to the June ballot.
After being sworn in by Herrera Monday morning, Ryan will attend his first meeting as a commissioner on Wednesday, during the government oversight body’s scheduled meeting. The commission has five members, with one member each appointed by the mayor, Board of Supervisors, city attorney, district attorney and the assessor.
The Ethics Commission is responsible for enforcing a variety of city regulations, including campaign finance and open government laws.
— Dominic Fracassa