Senate Confirms United States Attorney

BOSTON – Andrew E. Lelling has been confirmed by the U.S. Senate as the United States Attorney for the District of Massachusetts. 

“I am honored to be confirmed as the United States Attorney and I look forward to serving the residents of Massachusetts,” said Mr. Lelling. “As a federal prosecutor I have had the privilege of working with some of the best federal and state law enforcement officers in the country.  As U.S. Attorney, I will continue to collaborate with these distinguished public servants to fulfill the mission of the Department of Justice.”   

Mr. Lelling has worked for the U.S. Department of Justice for 16 years, serving first in the Civil Rights Division at Main Justice and then as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia and the District of Massachusetts.  In September 2017, President Donald J. Trump nominated Mr. Lelling to serve as U.S. Attorney for the District of Massachusetts; he was confirmed by the U.S. Senate late yesterday. 

As an Assistant U.S. Attorney, Mr. Lelling has prosecuted complex frauds, international drug trafficking, immigration offenses and other matters. Most recently, he led the successful prosecution of one of the largest pyramid schemes ever prosecuted by the Justice Department, TelexFree, Inc., which involved nearly two million victims worldwide who lost over $3 billion.  Mr. Lelling has also prosecuted major drug trafficking organizations, including the Hells Angels, domestic branches of Mexican drug cartels, and global drug traffickers based in Eastern Europe.  In his role as the Senior Litigation Counsel for the office, Mr. Lelling developed enforcement policy for criminal prosecutions and trained prosecutors and law enforcement officers on criminal practice.

Before serving as a federal prosecutor, Mr. Lelling was Counsel to the Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division, focusing on voting rights enforcement and civil rights-related criminal prosecutions.  Before joining the Justice Department in 2001, Mr. Lelling was a senior litigation associate at Goodwin LLP in Boston and, before that, a litigation associate at LeBoeuf, Lamb, Greene & MacRae LLP in New York.  In 1994-1995, he clerked for Chief Judge B. Avant Edenfield in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Georgia.

Mr. Lelling graduated cum laude from University of Pennsylvania Law School in 1994 and received his Bachelor of Arts in Literature & Rhetoric from Binghamton University in 1991. Until recently, Mr. Lelling taught an upper-level seminar on securities regulation and enforcement at New England Law Boston. He is a member of the Federalist Society and a former member of the Boston Bar Journal’s Board of Editors.