Haanstad, Shah put forward as US attorneys for Wisconsin Eastern, Western districts

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President Joe Biden has nominated Gregory J. Haanstad for U.S. Attorney of the Eastern District of Wisconsin and Sopen B. Shah as U.S. Attorney for the Western District.

Haanstad is a University of Wisconsin Law School graduate. After graduating in 2000, he served as a law clerk for Magistrate Judge William Callahan Jr. until 2002, when he began working as an Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Wisconsin. Previously, from 2015 to 2016, Haanstad had served as Acting U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District and, from 2016 to 2018, served as U.S. Attorney.

Shah is a Yale Law School graduate. Following her graduation in 2015, she clerked for Judge Amul Thapar at the U.S. District Court for the Easter District of Kentucky from 2015 to 2016 and for Judge Debra Ann Livingston on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit from 2016 to 2017. Shah previously served as deputy solicitor general of Wisconsin from 2017 to 2019. Shah is now counsel at Perkins Coie, where she began practicing in 2019.

They were two of five nominees for U.S. Attorney announced on Monday.

The others were:

• E. Martin Estrada as U.S. attorney for the Central District of California, the most populous district in the country.
• Adair Ford Boroughs for the District of South Carolina.
• Natalie K. Wight for the District of Oregon.

They were chosen “for their devotion to enforcing the law, their professionalism, their experience and credentials, their dedication to pursuing equal justice for all, and their commitment to the independence of the Department of Justice,” a White House statement said.

Two nominees for U.S. marshals also were announced: Chrissie Latimore for the District of South Carolina and Kirk Taylor for the District of Colorado.

Ali Teske of the Wisconsin Law Journal contributed to this story.