Gregory Kehoe, a longtime Tampa defense attorney and former federal prosecutor, has been appointed interim U.S. Attorney for the Middle District of Florida.
The appointment, which took effect Monday, was announced by U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi.
As the top federal prosecutor for the Middle District, Kehoe will oversee a 35-county region that includes the greater Tampa Bay region.
Kehoe, 70, takes over for Roger Handberg, who left the position in February as part of a Trump administration housecleaning of prosecutors who served under President Joe Biden.
Kehoe’s resume includes 20 years as a prosecutor with the Department of Justice, working on domestic and international cases with posts in the United States, Europe, Asia and South America. As an assistant U.S. Attorney, he prosecuted multiple high-profile cases involving corporate fraud and racketeering.
Kehoe led the team of lawyers and investigators that advised the Iraqi Special Tribunal, an ad hoc court formed to prosecute Saddam Hussein and members of his regime. He was also a legal adviser assisting in the investigation of war crimes by the Iraqi government.
He also served on the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, established in 1993 to prosecute war crimes during the Yugoslav wars.
Most recently, he was a shareholder of Miami-based Greenberg Traurig, one of the nation’s largest law firms, with more than 2,800 attorneys globally and 26 in Tampa.
In 2015, Kehoe represented three attorneys representing radio personality Bubba the Love Sponge. The Tampa case was related to a defamation case brought by another radio DJ, Todd “MJ” Schnitt. The attorneys were disbarred for setting up the DUI arrest of one of Schnitt’s lawyers.
Handberg, a career federal prosecutor, was appointed by former U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland in 2021, then nominated by Biden and confirmed by the Senate. After his position was vacated, first assistant Sara Sweeney served as acting U.S. Attorney until Kehoe’s appointment.
It’s common for incoming presidents to replace any number of the country’s 93 U.S. attorneys. The U.S. Attorneys for all three Florida districts were replaced after President Donald Trump took office.
At the time, Trump wrote that the housecleaning was because the DOJ had been “politicized like never before” over the past four years.
