In the summer of 1999, Leigha Simonton, who had just completed her first year at Yale Law School, landed an internship with the U.S. attorney’s office in Dallas.
“It was love at first sight,” she would say a quarter-century later. “Every day after that internship, I was figuring out how to become an assistant U.S. attorney here.”
Simonton achieved her career goal, and then some. On Sunday, the day before the presidential inauguration, Simonton will officially step down as U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Texas, a position she’s held since December 2022. (Chad Meacham, a veteran top criminal prosecutor in the office, will serve as acting U.S. attorney, a position he’s held in the past, until Trump names a successor to Simonton.)
On the path from intern to top dog, the 48-year-old Simonton held a variety of positions in the office. She was hired as an assistant U.S. attorney in April of 2005, after two years as a litigation associate at Haynes and Boone. Her most recent position before President Joe Biden chose her to lead the office was chief of its appellate division.
In her two years as U.S. attorney, the office tried its highest number of cases in more than a decade. Simonton actively supervised several high-profile cases, notably the prosecution of 11 drug traffickers charged after four middle- and high-school students in the Carrollton area died of fentanyl overdoses. (At least 10 other teens were injured by ingesting the potent synthetic opioid.) In July 2023, she announced the indictment of 14 people accused of defrauding numerous financial institutions and the federal Paycheck Protection Program, a financial relief initiative to help businesses stay afloat through the pandemic, out of more than $53 million. The case was the largest to date investigated by the government’s Pandemic Response Accountability Committee Fraud Task Force.
In a far-ranging interview with The Texas Lawbook, Simonton talked about her proudest accomplishments as chief federal prosecutor for 100 Texas counties; why she gave up a secure job as a career prosecutor to take the top position, knowing U.S. attorneys serve at the pleasure of the president; what she envisions over the horizon for her successor; the qualities she looks for when hiring young lawyers; and her professional mantra (you’ll have to read to the end). Without divulging details, she said she plans to enter private practice — after a respite to travel and spend time with her family. (She is married to U.S. Magistrate David L. Horan, a fellow Yale Law grad. They have three children.)
The interview was edited for brevity and clarity.
The Texas Lawbook: You’re hardly new to the U.S. attorney’s office. Still, was there anything about being the U.S. attorney that surprised you?
Leigha Simonton: How much fun it was. I was honored and humbled to have such an important job, watching out for over 8 million people in the Northern District every day. I thought the heaviness of that would be the thing I felt most, but it was actually the fun of it. You get to be the decision-maker. Ideas come to you or are suggested by others to make the office better, and you have the resources to implement them. You get to help law enforcement and the people in the district. It’s been exciting to be the one who gets to make those things happen.
Lawbook: You graduated from Yale Law School, where you were managing editor of The Yale Law Journal. You had prestigious judicial clerkships [with U.S. District Judge Barbara Lynn and U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Patrick Higginbotham], and you were hired by a prestigious Dallas law firm, Haynes and Boone. You could have had the career of your choice. What made you choose, at an early age, the U.S. attorney’s office?
Simonton: I chose to intern here while I was in law school because I understood that the U.S. attorney’s office does a lot of exciting work. They work with law enforcement, they solve crimes, they put people on trial, they’re in court a lot. That mix was really appealing to me. I never forgot how much I enjoyed that internship. I decided this was where I could get the best courtroom experience as a young attorney, even being solo counsel on cases, but also doing important work for the people of the district. You feel the impact of what you’re doing on an almost-daily basis. There are not many jobs where that happens, especially as a young attorney.
Lawbook: A lot of people start out in the office with those same ambitions but then decide after a few years to make a hell of a lot more money working in the private sector.
Simonton: I have never been motivated primarily by money. If I were, I would have made completely different life choices. I need to love what I do every day. That’s what motivates me, and that’s why I have stayed with this office. And not just because of the kind of work I was doing. It was also because of the team here. I’ve loved working with them.
Lawbook: So, any regrets about having to leave now?
Simonton: I knew when I took this job that it might be short-term, and I was very ambivalent about that. But I like to continue to learn and grow. I had worked at literally every level in this office except this one, so I decided that rather than stay static I would take the job knowing that, as with every U.S. attorney, it would come to an end. I knew I would have to go out and do something different, and I find myself surprisingly excited about the possibilities. I’ve learned how much good I can do, whether here or in the private sector. When I leave, it doesn’t mean I’ll stop doing what I love. I’ll just be doing it somewhere different.
Lawbook: You were sworn in at the end of 2022, almost two years after President Joe Biden took office and almost two years after your predecessor, Erin Nealy Cox, resigned. A lot of lawyers, including some prosecutors, say that a time gap that long can be detrimental to the office — that no acting U.S. attorney, no matter how able, can focus on long-range planning and long-range needs the way a permanent, confirmed U.S. attorney can. Stipulating that you had no say in the timing, and that both Prerak Shah and Chad Meacham did a fine job as interims, do you wish the presidential appointment process could be smoother and quicker?
Simonton: It is always beneficial to have presidentially appointed U.S. attorneys, and sooner rather than later. They are empowered by the Justice Department to do more than acting ones. With every transition, there are different managers that the office has to get used to, and that law enforcement has to get used to. Ideally, there could be more continuity with earlier presidential appointments.
Lawbook: What do you see on the horizon for the office? What are the trends or types of cases that you think will be pursued in the next year or two? Will there be a continuation of priorities you put in place?
Simonton: The office will continue to attack violent crime throughout the district, because we’ve had a lot of success on that front. The violent crime rate has fallen throughout the United States, including in our district, and a large part of the reason, I believe, is the focus the Justice Department has put on that. We were tasked with addressing violent crime from the top, and the office will keep doing that. We have the personnel in place, and I have no doubt that whoever follows me will have the same priority.
The office will also work to continue our successes on the fraud front. One of my goals coming in was to grow our fraud practice in different ways. That needs to continue. The population of the district is growing, we have corporate headquarters here, and we have so many healthcare centers.
We’ve started seeing a lot more fraud cases go to trial. I put Chad [Meacham], our most experienced criminal prosecutor, in charge of that. He was able to help get cases moving again after COVID, which kind of slowed things down on the law enforcement front.
My first assistant, Scott Hogan, is the former civil chief, and he has a deep knowledge of how to address fraud on the civil side, so we’ve grown that practice in terms of resources and personnel. They’ve had a lot of success with civil fraud settlements and voluntary self-disclosures. We issued the first-ever formal voluntary self-disclosure policy for our district. All of that’s going to continue.
Lawbook: Speaking of COVID, a lot of financial malfeasance that took place when the pandemic was raging is now coming to light through the legal system. There was a ton of federal money to be had, whether for Paycheck Protection Program loans, personal protective equipment, COVID testing or other things And the government, understandably, pushed that money out quickly. People needed immediate help. But since then, fraud in the billions of dollars has been uncovered. Will these investigations continue to mount over the next year or two?
Simonton: Yes. Definitely. We have been tackling that very hard, both criminally and on the civil side. We have multiple collaborative strike force-type entities in our district. That’s a way of bringing different agencies together to bring cases throughout the district, not just in Dallas. Many of those cases are working their way through the pipeline right now. COVID fraud will remain a huge focus.
Lawbook: After you were sworn in, one of the first huge cases to land on your desk was the fentanyl trafficking prosecutions stemming from the overdose deaths of four Carrollton-area teens. You were personally involved in overseeing that case. What lessons did you take away from that?
Simonton: People in our area knew about fentanyl, of course, but then all of a sudden it sort of burst on the scene with young people dying. And so the most important thing to me, other than prosecuting traffickers — which we’ve done a lot and gotten lengthy sentences — is fentanyl education. We need kids to understand how deadly these pills are.
Pills seem safer than the street drugs people traditionally think about. You’re not shooting them up. Young people think, oh, it’s a legitimate pill that someone got from a pharmacy down the road. No. It’s a dangerous substance masquerading as a pill. It’s something drug traffickers create with their own pill presses.
After the Carrollton overdoses, I created the Protect Our Children Project. It has several focuses, but the main one is fentanyl education. We train the trainers. We talk to school administrators and staff, starting with superintendents and working our way down. We have more than 400 school districts in the Northern District. I know this because I helped create an email list for the project, and I wanted to know who was on it. We held four webinars on fentanyl education. The last two were right before school started [in 2023]. The head of the Drug Enforcement Administration in our area, Eduardo Chavez, participated. So did the chief medical officer for Parkland Hospital, Dr. Joseph Chang. We had hundreds of people tune in.
I went and talked to schools. We had our prosecutors doing it, DEA was doing it, HIDTA [the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area program] was doing it. I met in Austin with the other three U.S. attorneys in Texas, and we talked to the heads of all the regional Education Service Centers in the state. We encouraged them to incorporate information about fentanyl into day-to-day school practices, in health classes and morning announcements and meetings with families.
I really believe these efforts are part of why the rate of fentanyl overdoses has gone down. It’s gone down throughout the country, but particularly in our area.
[EDITOR’S NOTE: The National Center for Health Statistics reported that U.S. deaths from synthetic opioids (primarily fentanyl) decreased to 74,702 in 2023 from 76,226 in 2022, the first year-to-year decline in more than a decade. In Texas, according to state health officials, the fentanyl death toll rose moderately in 2023, to 2,306, from 2,197 in 2022. However, that followed several years of far steeper increases. And in 2024, the drug’s toll on Texans plummeted, causing an estimated 1,060 deaths. That number could change, health officials note; death certificates are still being filed for deaths that occurred in 2024.]
Lawbook: During your tenure, the office tried more cases than it had in over a decade. You personally had a hand in overseeing many of those trials. Was that something you anticipated doing? Was it something you insisted on?
Simonton: It came from my years of experience supporting trial teams as an appellate assistant U.S. attorney and from my understanding of the substantive law in a lot of areas. I wanted to have a close role in talking, primarily with the criminal chief, about cases. I sat through a lot of indictment reviews, especially on cases of major public significance. Should we charge? Who should we charge? What should the charges be? Sometimes we’d meet just so I could greenlight the prosecution of a certain person or entity. I wanted to be responsible for everything that came through our office.
I sat in on a lot of moot courts for people doing openings and closings and talked with them about what evidence they’d present.
Lawbook: Does it ever make young associates nervous when the boss weighs in?
Simonton: It does. And it should. If I were them, I would have been nervous. But I think I’ve learned how to give direct but gentle feedback, to build people up, not tear them down. I try to be helpful, not harsh. They usually thank me and their other supervisors afterwards. Young attorneys know they’ll do better because of what they’ve learned from the senior people in the room.
Lawbook: Do you personally interview every candidate for assistant U.S. attorney?
Simonton: Every finalist, yes.
Lawbook: How do you know when you’ve got the right candidate?
Simonton: It’s important for me not just to select a particular individual but also to think about the teams I was building in each part of the office. We tried to build teams of people with complementary backgrounds. We have people who’ve come from district attorneys’ offices where they’ve tried a hundred cases. And we have people who come from law firms who might not have a lot of trial experience, but who do have a lot of writing and research experience.
Some of what I look for has to do with the reasons I came to this office and stayed. Part of what makes someone a dedicated member of our team is being OK with leaving behind a bunch of money, because a lot of times that’s what they’re doing, just like I did. I love it when people value the experience we provide. They understand that what they’re not making in money, they’re making up for in experience. They’ll get to be first chair on a case really quick, or do oral arguments on a case they briefed, instead of sitting and watching a more senior person do it. We don’t want someone who’s afraid of the courtroom.
Finally, I want people who are dedicated to public service. If I had to name one trait that’s the key to success in our office, it’s being passionate about serving the public. You don’t get a lot of perks in this job. Your perk is knowing you’ve done something good for the community you live in.
Lawbook: What’s next for you?
Simonton: In the short term I’m taking a break to spend time with my family and go on a few trips with my husband and children. I’m really excited about that. Then I’m going to head into private practice, which, as you point out, is something I have not done in a while. I’ll be trying something different. I’m excited about that, too.
I have a whole catalog of ideas I’m excited about.
I miss the daily practice of law. That is the one thing this job hasn’t given me an opportunity to do much of. I miss doing appellate work. I miss supporting trial teams.
I’m excited to help clients working with the government, whether they are victims or witnesses or targets, because I understand the way that works and can help on that front.
I’m excited about helping companies conduct internal investigations into potential fraud to help them reach solutions that way.
I want to go somewhere where I can continue team-building. That’s important to me because I think I have a really good eye for talent and for people who will be wonderful to work with. I’ve helped hire a lot of people who are here because I recruited them or interviewed them, and I want to keep doing that in the private sector.
And one thing I would never give up is working with the community organizations that I’ve formed bonds with while in this office, in particular the domestic violence organizations we’ve worked with. One area of the law I know really well involves legal remedies for dealing with domestic abuse, and the legal issues that come with trying to incapacitate domestic abusers.
Lawbook: You’ve expressed concern for protecting vulnerable communities, including religious minorities. What can be done to counter the national rise in hate crimes?
Simonton: It’s a very difficult time in terms of hateful actions towards religious minorities. There are things we can and should be doing: Supporting religious freedom. Untying our views about what’s going on in the world from the particular people living in our communities. Not saying horrible things online. Not defacing a synagogue or mosque with graffiti. And talking to our children about all this. Talk to them about having respect for others, about understanding that the way you tackle something you don’t agree with is not through violence or threats of violence.
We’ve also seen hateful actions directed at judges who were appointed by presidents across the political spectrum. To try to intimidate a judge to rule a certain way is completely antithetical to the structure of our government and to us as a people. It’s important to continue to enforce the laws against such actions. Deterrence is gained from the press attention given to these cases. People should know that the Justice Department and state and local authorities take threats and actions that put lives in danger seriously, and you will be prosecuted if you take part in them. It’s not funny. It’s not a joke. It’s very hurtful.
Some people say, well, it’s just rhetoric. There is free speech. But actual threats, actual damage or violence against people is not OK. It is illegal.
Lawbook: Last question: Is there anything I forgot to ask that you want to talk about?
Simonton: Oh, man. OK.
First, this may sound hokey, but I created a theme for my tenure as U.S. attorney. It was “Making an Impact.” There were three parts to it: Making an impact through our people and cases; second, through our training; and, third, through outreach to different populations.
Everything about our office was built on that framework. I would give presentations in the office every six months or so in which I would go over the framework and describe what we were doing to make sure we were firing on all cylinders. I would do the same when I made presentations to judges or outside organizations that invited me to speak. It was important to me to have an organized plan to get so much done in what I knew could be a fairly short amount of time. And I’m really proud of everything we were able to accomplish.
Second, I had this mantra for myself: The easiest thing you can do is show up. There are so many hard things about this job, but it’s easy to show up when you’re invited. And I also showed up several times when I wasn’t invited. I just invited myself to events where I knew it would be appreciated that I was there. It makes people feel good that you support them and care about them and are paying attention to them.