Deputy Attorney General: A. Devitt Vanech

A. Devitt Vanech was the 2nd Deputy Attorney General of the United States. He served as the Department’s second-ranking official from September 1951 to August 1952.

At the time of his nomination for the post of Deputy Attorney General, Mr. Vanech was Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Lands Division. One of the major projects during Vanech’s tenure as head of that division, which began in 1947, was the acquisition of land for the Central Valley Project in California, a federal water management project that brought millions of acre-feet of water to California cities and farms annually.

Mr. Vanech received an undergraduate law degree from the Washington College of Law in 1936 and an LL.M. from Catholic University in 1944.