Greg Kehoe was selected as a US lawyer in Tampa, court documents say

TAMPA — Tampa’s defense attorney and former federal prosecutor Greg Kehoe has been selected as the next US attorney for the Central District of Florida, according to a pair of court documents filed Friday.

White House press did not immediately respond to a message asking for confirmation of Kehoe’s choice on Saturday. However, documents filed in the Orlando federal criminal case require the judge to allow Kehoe and his company, Greenberg Traurig, to withdraw from representing the defendant.

One of the documents written by Kehoe said he told a judge on Feb. 25 that he had a conflict of interest in the case, “because he was notified the previous night that he had been selected as a US lawyer for the Central District of Florida.”

Kehoe did not respond to voicemail and email messages seeking comment late on Friday and Saturday.

If he is officially appointed, Kehoe must be confirmed by the US Senate. He could be appointed to serve as an acting US lawyer while his permanent appointment is pending.

“There’s probably no attorney more qualified than Greg Kehoe,” said John Fitzgibbons, Tampa’s defense counsel and former federal prosecutor who previously headed the Federal Judicial Nominations Committee. “He knows the office closely. …He stepped in and runs on the first day.”

Kehoe will replace Roger Handberg, who took office last month after serving as the top federal prosecutor in the area, including Tampa Bay since 2021.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Central District of Florida is prosecuting federal crimes in 35 counties across Jacksonville and Naples.

There are 93 US lawyers appointed by the president to represent governments in federal judicial districts around the country. The office is nonpartisan, but serves at the president’s request.

Since President Donald Trump began his second term in January, most of the US lawyers who served during former President Joe Biden’s term have been removed or resigned.

At 70, Kehoe has a long legal career, including stint as Tampa’s first assistant lawyer in the late 1980s and early 1990s. As a federal prosecutor, he handled cases involving outlaw motorcycle gangs, international drug rings and public corruption.

In the late 1990s, Kehoe served four years in the International Court of the Hague, the Netherlands, and charged war crimes in the former Yugoslavia. In 2004 he served as legal counsel tasked with helping to investigate war crimes committed by the regime of late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. He cooperated in a special Iraqi court to bring Hussein to trial.

As a defense attorney, Kehoe represented one of the Adams & Diaco Company’s lawyers who were denied dui after being found to have coordinated the DUI arrest of the opposing lawyer in a well-known civil case involving Radio Shock Jock Baba and his rival Todd “MJ” Schnitt.

Kehoe, the son of a New York City police officer, grew up in the Bronx and Brooklyn. He received his degree in political science from Boston University in 1976 and a degree in law from St. John’s University in New York in 1979.