Senate Judiciary Committee approved two nominees for Iowa’s U.S. attorneys

WASHINGTON - Sen. Chuck Grassley announced Thursday the Senate Judiciary Committee approved two nominees to serve as Iowa's U.S. attorneys.

Peter Deegan, Jr., nominee for the northern district, and Marc Krickbaum, nominee for the southern district, were approved by a unanimous, bipartisan voice vote of committee members.

'Both Pete Deegan and Marc Krickbaum are highly qualified and ready to lead the offices of U.S. Attorneys in Iowa. Mr. Deegan's nearly 20 years of experience in the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Iowa, most recently as criminal chief, will serve the people of Iowa well,” Grassley, committee chair, said in a statement. 'The Southern District of Iowa will benefit from Mr. Krickbaum's experience in the Department of Justice, first as counsel to the Deputy Attorney General, then as an Assistant United States Attorney in Chicago and Des Moines.

The two nominees await confirmation by the full U.S. Senate, which will be in recess until Sept. 5. No confirmation vote is scheduled at this time.

There were six other U.S. attorney nominees from various states also approved and the full Senate confirmed three others Thursday.

President Donald Trump named the two men in July.

Deegan is an assistant U.S. attorney and the chief the criminal division and has worked in the Cedar Rapids office for more than 10 years. He also served as an assistant U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of Michigan from 2004 to 2006.

A graduate of the University of Notre Dame and Wayne State University Law School, Deegan has prosecuted a variety of federal offenses with an emphasis on complex white collar and business crime. He previously was an associate attorney at Murphy Smith and Polk in Chicago, where his practice focused on labor and employment litigation.

Krickbaum is an assistant U.S. attorney in the northern district of Illinois and previously served as an assistant U.S. attorney in Iowa's southern district of Iowa. Before that, Krickbaum, previously of Des Moines, was counsel to the deputy attorney general, and a trial attorney in the civil division of the Department of Justice.

He was a clerk for Judge Steven M. Colloton of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit after graduating from the University of Iowa and receiving his law degree from Harvard Law School.

Deegan and Krickbaum were among the five attorneys that Grassley and Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, jointly recommended to Trump for the positions.

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