Ahead of President-elect Donald Trump’s administration, Alamdar Hamdani, the first Asian American to be nominated to the position by the president, announced his resignation on Wednesday. Hamdani is the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Texas.
Over the course of his two years in the role, Hamdani oversaw the office in over 10,000 criminal cases and kept a conviction rate of 95 percent.
“It has been an honor of a lifetime to serve as the 24th Presidentially Appointed U.S. Attorney for this amazing district,” Hamdani said in a statement on Wednesday. We have achieved tremendous progress in the last two years on a number of fronts, enhancing our community, maintaining justice, and guaranteeing everyone’s safety.
He will step down at midnight on January 19, only hours before Trump takes the oath of office as the 47th President of the United States. This action is common among other U.S. attorneys appointed by the president prior to a change in the party and administration.
Ahead of Inauguration Day, U.S. Attorneys in Florida, Vermont, Massachusetts, and other states have also declared their intention to step down in the last week.
When Hamdani was ten years old, his family moved to England, where he was born to Indian parents. According to a press release, he received degrees from the University of Houston and the University of Texas.
Using his mother’s past as a destitute immigrant as support for his personal motto—treat and protect people as you would your own mother—Hamdani, a father himself, promoted operating his office on the “mama rule.”
With a focus on cases connected to Mexican cartels, his agency spearheaded the prosecution of crimes involving children, human smuggling, and white collar crime. A business that agreed to pay more than $160 million to settle investigations into bribery payments made to a high-ranking official in Brazil’s state-owned oil corporation came under further scrutiny after the news release announcing Hamdani’s retirement.
In order to guarantee fair and equal playing fields for American businesses and customers, our office takes seriously the job of prosecuting and looking into this kind of crime, Hamdani stated.
Although Hamdani had worked with the Department of Justice since 2008, he joined the U.S. Attorney’s Office in 2014. As an assistant U.S. Attorney for a number of years, Hamdani oversaw the investigation and prosecution of corruption and national security offenses.
After Hamdani resigned, it was unclear on Thursday who would be the interim U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Texas until Trump names a successor.
