Ortiz Announces Appointment of First Assistant U.S. Attorney

BOSTON – U.S. Attorney Carmen M. Ortiz announced that William Weinreb has been appointed to serve as First Assistant United States Attorney for the District of Massachusetts.  Weinreb previously served as Counsel to the U.S. Attorney for two years, and was Deputy Chief of the National Security Unit and Coordinator of the Anti-Terrorism Advisory Council.

“Bill has served as a trusted advisor to me, sharing his expertise and legal acumen cultivated by years as a litigator, on numerous sensitive legal and law enforcement matters handled by the Office,” said U.S. Attorney Ortiz. “Bill’s longstanding commitment to public service, combined with his experience, will serve the District of Massachusetts well, and I look forward to working closely with him in his new role.”

Mr. Weinreb has been the lead prosecutor in a number of high-profile and challenging cases, most notably, the 2015 conviction of Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.  He received the Attorney General’s Distinguished Service Award for his prosecution of Aftab Ali, a Boston resident who helped fund the attempted car bombing of Times Square.  He also successfully prosecuted Massachusetts’s first case of foreign economic espionage; its first case involving use of a laser to interfere with the operation of an aircraft; and its first case involving the threatened use of a biological weapon (ricin).   

In addition to prosecuting cases, Mr. Weinreb has been a leader in the Office’s outreach efforts to vulnerable communities.  He also helped launch the office’s new Civil Rights Unit and has been a strong advocate for the protection of civil rights and civil liberties in the Commonwealth.

Ms. Weinreb joined the U.S. Attorney’s Office in 2000 after serving for five years as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the District of Columbia.  Over the course of his career, he has prosecuted numerous violent crime and white collar cases, including rape, attempted murder, child sexual abuse, narcotics trafficking, money laundering, public corruption, insurance fraud and health care fraud.  In additional to his trial work, Mr. Weinreb has argued over 20 cases before the First Circuit, D.C. Circuit and D.C. Court of Appeals.

Before becoming an Assistant U.S. Attorney, Mr. Weinreb was a litigation associate at Shea & Gardner in Washington, D.C. from 1990 to 1995.  Prior to that, he was a law clerk for then-Chief Judge Stephen Breyer of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit.   

Mr. Weinreb graduated cum laude from Harvard Law School in 1989, and received his Bachelor of Arts in English Literature from Wesleyan University in 1984.