Jacqueline C. Romero
Photo Courtesy of Al Dia News
Jacqueline C. Romero was sworn in as the United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania on June 21, 2022. As U.S. Attorney, Ms. Romero is the chief federal law enforcement officer responsible for all federal criminal prosecutions and civil litigation involving the United States in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, which is one of the nation’s most populous districts with over 5 million people residing within its nine counties (Berks, Bucks, Chester, Delaware, Lancaster, Lehigh, Montgomery, Northampton and Philadelphia counties), covering about 4,700 square miles. Ms. Romero supervises a staff of approximately 140 Assistant U.S. Attorneys and a similar number of non-attorney support personnel at offices in Philadelphia and Allentown.
Prior to her appointment as United States Attorney, she served as an Assistant United States Attorney in the same office for 16 years. While in that position, she specialized in fraud investigations and civil rights investigations, serving as the Civil Rights Coordinator for the Office for seven years and as a member of the Newark/Philadelphia Regional Medicare Fraud Strike Force for four years. Her other collateral duties also included appointment to the district’s Supervision to Aid Reentry (STAR) program, a heightened supervised release program for felons reentering the Philadelphia community.
Ms. Romero joined the District from the United States Treasury Department, U.S. Mint, Office of Chief Counsel, where she worked as an Attorney-Advisor. Prior to joining the United States Mint, she worked as a trial attorney for the Department of Justice, Civil Division, Commercial Litigation Branch, and also as a litigation associate for the law firm of Lowenstein, Sandler in New Jersey.
From 2017 until 2022, Ms. Romero was an Adjunct Professor of Law in the Trial Advocacy Program at Temple University’s Beasley School of Law and a volunteer faculty member with the National Institute of Trial Advocacy from 2016 to 2022. She is a former fellow of both the German Marshall Fund and the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute. She served as President of the Hispanic Bar Association of Pennsylvania in 2018 and has served on its Board, as well as the Board of the LGBTQ Bar Association of Philadelphia and the Philadelphia Bar Association’s Judicial Commission. She is a lifetime member of the Hispanic National Bar Association (HNBA) and served on the HNBA’s Special Commission on Law Enforcement Reform and Racial Justice and the HNBA’s Latina Commission. She is also a past-Commissioner of the Philadelphia Bar Association’s Judicial Commission.
During the course of her career, Ms. Romero has been recognized by various groups for her leadership and service. Most recently, she received Al Día’s 2020 Champion of Justice Award for Government Service. In October 2018, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania recognized her via Resolution for her outstanding work in the STAR Reentry Program. In that same year, she was also awarded the Clifford Scott Green Bill of Rights Award from the Federal Criminal Law Committee for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.
Ms. Romero earned her B.A. in English with a minor in Political Science, magna cum laude, from Trenton State College (now the College of New Jersey). She earned her J.D. from Rutgers University School of Law, Newark, where she was co-founder of the Rutgers Race and the Law Review and Research Editor of the Computer & Technology Law Journal.