Christopher R. Kavanaugh

United States Attorney

Christopher R. Kavanaugh was nominated by President Joseph R. Biden, Jr. on August 10, 2021 and unanimously confirmed by the Senate on October 5, 2021 to be the United States Attorney for the Western District of Virginia.  President Biden signed Mr. Kavanaugh’s commission on October 7, 2021.  As United States Attorney, Mr. Kavanaugh is the chief federal law enforcement officer in the Western District of Virginia.  He also serves as chair of the Terrorism and National Security Subcommittee to the Attorney General’s Advisory Committee and co-chair of the Domestic Terrorism Executive Committee.

Prior to his nomination, Mr. Kavanaugh had been an Assistant United States Attorney for 14 years, having served in United States Attorney’s Offices for both the Western District of Virginia and the District of Columbia.  During his career, Mr. Kavanaugh directed numerous multi-agency investigations and prosecutions, with a focus on national security, civil rights, white-collar crime, and violent crimes involving racketeering and homicides.  While in the Western District of Virginia, he served as the District’s chief national security prosecutor and Senior Litigation Counsel.  Most recently, he was Senior Counsel to the Deputy Attorney General at the U.S. Department of Justice in Washington, D.C.

For the last decade, Mr. Kavanaugh was part of the Adjunct Faculty at the University of Virginia School of Law, where he taught federal criminal practice and trial advocacy. Mr. Kavanaugh graduated summa cum laude from Georgia Tech, where he was awarded a Bachelor of Science in Industrial and Systems Engineering.  He earned his law degree from the University of Virginia School of Law.  Following law school, he clerked for the Honorable James C. Cacheris, U.S. District Court Judge for the Eastern District of Virginia.