The top federal prosecutor in western Virginia on Wednesday announced he would resign from his post at the end of the year after President Joe Biden appointed his wife to serve as a federal judge in his district.
U.S. Attorney Chris Kavanaugh, who has headed up the federal prosecutor's office for the Western District of Virginia since 2021, in announcing his decision noted that his wife, Jasmine Yoon, is slated to begin serving as a judge on Tuesday.
Virginia's Western District covers Roanoke and Charlottesville and only has four active trial court judges including Yoon, who would be forced to recuse herself from any criminal cases brought by Kavanaugh's office.
Kavanaugh, a fellow Biden appointee, said that during the brief period in which both he and his wife are in office at the same time, all criminal matters will be assigned to other judges in the district.
"Serving as United States Attorney has been the highlight of my professional life," he said.
Yoon, who was a prosecutor herself in Virginia's Eastern District, had prior to being nominated to the bench served as vice president of corporate integrity, ethics and investigations at Capital One.
The Democratic-led Senate confirmed her in March to become Virginia's first Asian American federal judge on a 55–41 vote.
While her nomination was pending, she had addressed the potential conflict that she would face due to her husband's position in response to a question Senator Lindsay Graham of South Carolina, the ranking Republican on the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, posed on a questionnaire.
Yoon said she would recuse herself from any cases in which the United States was a party until he left office and from any matters that were active within Kavanaugh's office during his tenure.
High-profile cases prosecuted during his tenure include a guilty plea in June by research animal breeder Envigo, in which the company agreed to pay $35 million to resolve an investigation into its mistreatment of thousands of beagles.
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