Erin Nealy Cox, U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Texas, announced today that she is stepping down. Her last day on the job will be Jan. 8.
Nealy Cox was appointed by President Donald Trump in late 2017. It’s customary for U.S. attorneys to step aside at the start of a new administration, particularly when the incoming and outgoing presidents are of different political parties.
“I wish I would be able to do it longer, but I’m so grateful for having done it as long as I could,” she said in an exclusive interview with The Texas Lawbook. “One thing I know is I gave it all I could for as long as I could. I’ll continue to do that until the very last minute.
Nealy Cox, an internationally recognized expert in cybersecurity and cyberlaw enforcement, declined to discuss her career plans. The 50-year-old prosecutor is married to Trey Cox, a litigation partner in the Dallas office of Gibson Dunn.
Upon her departure, First Assistant U.S. Attorney Prerak Shah will serve as acting U.S. attorney.
Under Nealy Cox’s leadership, the sprawling Northern District – headquartered in Dallas and comprising 100 of Texas’s 254 counties – placed a newfound emphasis on prosecution of white-collar crimes, ranging from medical and insurance fraud to embezzlement and money laundering to insider trading and public corruption.
Many of the fruits of those efforts will be seen in coming years, she said, alluding to “a bunch of” ongoing investigations involving financial fraud, oil and gas fraud, bankruptcy fraud, even COVID fraud.
“The cases I am most proud of are the fraud cases coming in the next three years,” she told Texas Lawbook.
Since the start of the pandemic, she said, federal authorities have initiated both civil and criminal actions against suspected bad actors capitalizing on the health crisis – from purveyors of phony vaccines and therapeutics to traders luring investors into bogus schemes to recipients of unlawfully obtained paycheck protection loans from the federal government.
“There’s absolutely going to be more of that to come,” she told The Lawbook. “It’s a shame. We’re all going through this awful, unprecedented event together. You’d think we’d all pull together and band together, but there’s always an element that’s going to try to profit off people’s tragedies.
“You’d think there’s a level that people won’t go to, but unfortunately, they will.”
Beyond her office’s white-collar prosecutions, Nealy Cox emphasized its aggressive enforcement of federal firearms laws, including those prohibiting unlicensed weapons sales, possession of 3-D printed weapons, and gun possession by convicted domestic abusers. During her tenure, the Northern District has charged the second-highest number of defendants in gun crimes in the country.
Her most lasting legacy, she said, may be the hiring of 50 assistant U.S. attorneys, more than half of whom filled newly created positions for which she forcefully lobbied.
“We have had more positions given to us by main Justice in the last three years than in the 30 years before that, she said.
In a written statement announcing her resignation, Nealy Cox said:
“Serving as United States Attorney has been the privilege of a lifetime. Representing our nation is a tremendous responsibility – one I have tried to undertake with integrity and with accountability to the rule of law. …Through a courthouse shooting, a government shutdown, a global pandemic, and unprecedented civil unrest, the attorneys and staff of the Northern District of Texas have never wavered in their commitment to justice. We’ve seen similar determination from our federal, state, and local law enforcement partners. I am thankful for their passion and inspired by their dedication.”
Few lawyers have her combination of experience in the law, technology, business and administration. In addition to her law degree from Southern Methodist University, she has a degree in finance from the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin. She was a litigation associate at Simpson Thacher & Bartlett in New York City and Carrington Coleman Sloman & Blumenthal in Dallas before joining the U.S. attorney’s office as an assistant U.S. attorney in Dallas in 1999.
In 2004, she was assigned to Justice Department headquarters as chief of staff and senior counsel in the Office of Legal Policy, the division responsible for coordinating and advancing the department’s top policy and legislative initiatives. Those priorities, under President George W. Bush, included an intense focus on counter-terrorism.
In 2008, she left the government – and the law – to found the Dallas office of Stroz Friedberg, a worldwide business consulting firm specializing in cybersecurity and investigations. Eventually, she was promoted to lead the firm’s global response unit. At the time of her appointment as U.S. attorney, Nealy Cox was a senior adviser at McKinsey & Co., serving in its cybersecurity and risk practice.