US Attorney
Deborah Rhodes
Deborah J. Rhodes is the United States Attorney for the Southern District of Alabama, where she oversees the prosecution of all federal criminal cases and the litigation of all civil cases in which the United States is a party.
Ms. Rhodes was formerly Counselor to the Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division of the United States Department of Justice. She served as the Department’s ex officio Commissioner on the United States Sentencing Commission and as its representative on the Judicial Conference Advisory Committee on Criminal Rules. She also supervised the Office of Policy and Legislation and was the Department’s liaison to the American Bar Association, Criminal Justice Section.
Previously, she was an Assistant United States Attorney in San Diego where she served as Acting Chief of the Appellate Section and Deputy Chief of the Narcotics Enforcement Section. She successfully prosecuted large drug organizations and returned the first indictments against the Arellano-Felix brothers, leaders of the Tijuana cartel, widely reported as the most violent drug cartel in Mexico. Upon indictment, Ramon Arellano-Felix was named to the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitives.
As a Trial Attorney with the Department’s Organized Crime and Racketeering Section, Philadelphia Strike Force, Ms. Rhodes tried high profile organized crime cases involving the Scarfo crime family and others in federal courts in Philadelphia, Baltimore and Delaware. PBS featured one of these cases in a documentary titled “Mobfathers.”
Ms. Rhodes began her career by clerking for the Honorable J. William Ditter, Jr. of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. She graduated with honors from Rutgers Law School, Camden, New Jersey, where she was Editor-in-Chief of the Rutgers Law Journal.