John P. Cronan serves as the Acting Assistant Attorney General, as well as the Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General, for the Criminal Division. In that capacity, John supervises the Criminal Division’s more than 600 federal prosecutors who conduct investigations and prosecutions involving organized and transnational crime, gang violence, securities fraud, health care fraud, Foreign Corrupt Practices Act violations, public corruption, cybercrime, intellectual property theft, money laundering, Bank Secrecy Act violations, child exploitation, international narcotics trafficking, human rights violations, and other crimes, as well as matters involving international affairs and sensitive law enforcement techniques.
Previously, John supervised the Terrorism and International Narcotics Unit of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, where he oversaw the investigation and prosecution of individuals suspected of international and domestic terrorism offenses, largescale international drug trafficking, espionage, and export violations. As an Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, John prosecuted numerous national security defendants, including Sulaiman Abu Ghayth, Usama bin Laden’s son-in-law and al Qaeda’s spokesperson after 9/11; Abu Hamza al-Masri, a London-based terrorist leader who orchestrated global acts of terror; and Faisal Shahzad, who attempted to detonate a bomb in Times Square in May 2010. John has twice received the Attorney General’s Award for Distinguished Service (2016, 2011), and also has received the Executive Office of the United States Attorneys Director’s Award (2016), the Assistant Attorney General’s Award for Exceptional Service (2012), the New York City Federal Executive Board’s Award for Law Enforcement (2015), and the Federal Law Enforcement Foundation’s Prosecutor of the Year Award (2015).
John graduated magna cum laude from Georgetown University and received his J.D. from Yale Law School, where he was the Editor-in-Chief of the Yale Law and Policy Review. John clerked for the Honorable Robert A. Katzmann and the Honorable Barrington D. Parker, Jr. on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.