Timothy Shea is an American attorney and prosecutor. From May 2020 until January 2021, he served as acting administrator of the
Drug Enforcement Administration
The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA; ) is a Federal law enforcement in the United States, United States federal law enforcement agency under the U.S. Department of Justice tasked with combating drug trafficking and distribution within th ...
. Previously, he was interim
United States attorney for the District of Columbia
The United States Attorney for the District of Columbia (USADC) is the United States Attorney responsible for representing the federal government in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. The U.S. Attorney's Office for the ...
, the country's largest U.S. attorney's office;
a senior counselor to U.S. Attorney General
William Barr
William Pelham Barr (born May 23, 1950) is an American attorney who served as the 77th and 85th United States attorney general in the administrations of Presidents George H. W. Bush and Donald Trump.
Born and raised in New York City, Barr ...
at the
Department of Justice
A justice ministry, ministry of justice, or department of justice is a ministry or other government agency in charge of the administration of justice. The ministry or department is often headed by a minister of justice (minister for justice in a v ...
;
a lobbyist; and private corporate lawyer.
During his short tenure as U.S. attorney, Shea took the controversial step of calling for a dismissal of charges against Trump associate
Michael Flynn
Michael Thomas Flynn (born December 24, 1958) is a retired United States Army lieutenant general and conspiracy theorist who was the 24th U.S. National Security Advisor for the first 22 days of the Trump administration. He resigned in light of ...
, even though Flynn had already pleaded guilty. Shea also intervened in the criminal case against convicted Trump associate
Roger Stone
Roger Jason Stone (born Roger Joseph Stone Jr.; August 27, 1952) is an American conservative political consultant and lobbyist.
Since the 1970s, Stone has worked on the campaigns of Republican politicians, including Richard Nixon, Ronald Rea ...
, recommending a lighter sentence for Stone than the career prosecutors who had worked on the case.
Early life and education
Shea was born in
Fall River
Fall River is a city in Bristol County, Massachusetts, United States. The City of Fall River's population was 94,000 at the 2020 United States Census, making it the tenth-largest city in the state.
Located along the eastern shore of Mount H ...
,
, into a family of five generations of firefighters.
He studied political science and government at
Boston College
Boston College (BC) is a private Jesuit research university in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts. Founded in 1863, the university has more than 9,300 full-time undergraduates and nearly 5,000 graduate students. Although Boston College is classifie ...
, graduating magna cum laude in 1982.
He received his J.D. degree, graduating magna cum laude, from
Georgetown University Law Center
The Georgetown University Law Center (Georgetown Law) is the law school of Georgetown University, a private research university in Washington, D.C. It was established in 1870 and is the largest law school in the United States by enrollment and ...
in 1991.
Legal career
Shea has served in a variety of roles in the Justice Department. He was an assistant U.S. Attorney in Virginia between 1992 and 1997.
Shea was chief of the Massachusetts Attorney General's Office's Public Protection Bureau from 1999 to 2001.
He was chief counsel and staff director for the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. He also worked on the staff of the
House Appropriations Committee
The United States House Committee on Appropriations is a committee of the United States House of Representatives that is responsible for passing appropriation bills along with its Senate counterpart. The bills passed by the Appropriations Commi ...
.
Shea also worked as a lobbyist and private corporate lawyer.
He worked at the law firms
Morgan, Lewis & Bockius
Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP is an American multinational law firm with approximately 2,200 legal professionals in 31 offices across North America, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. Mergers with other law firms stimulated global growth and led to ...
and
Bingham McCutchen
Bingham McCutchen LLP was a global law firm with approximately 850 attorneys in nine US offices and five international offices. It ceased operations in late 2014, when several hundred of its partners and associate lawyers left the firm to join Phi ...
.
Shea was a "close confidant" to Attorney General
William Barr
William Pelham Barr (born May 23, 1950) is an American attorney who served as the 77th and 85th United States attorney general in the administrations of Presidents George H. W. Bush and Donald Trump.
Born and raised in New York City, Barr ...
and "Barr's right-hand man" at the Justice Department, according to
Fox News
The Fox News Channel, abbreviated FNC, commonly known as Fox News, and stylized in all caps, is an American multinational conservative cable news television channel based in New York City. It is owned by Fox News Media, which itself is owne ...
.
As a senior counselor, Shea advised Barr on changes at the
Federal Bureau of Prisons
The Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) is a United States federal law enforcement agency under the Department of Justice that is responsible for the care, custody, and control of incarcerated individuals who have committed federal crimes; that i ...
after the death of the sex offender
Jeffrey Epstein
Jeffrey Edward Epstein ( ; January 20, 1953August 10, 2019) was an American sex offender and financier. Epstein, who was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York City, began his professional life by teaching at the Dalton School in Manhattan, des ...
at the
Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York City.
Shea also worked on the Justice Department's Operation Relentless Pursuit.
Barr has known Shea since 1991, when Shea was associate deputy attorney general for Barr in the
George H.W. Bush administration.
U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia
Barr named Shea the interim U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia on January 30, 2020. Shea replaced
Jessie K. Liu
Jessie Kong Liu (born January 2, 1973) is an American attorney who was the United States Attorney for the District of Columbia. She previously worked as deputy general counsel at the U.S. Treasury and served at the Justice Department. In 2020, ...
, who had been U.S. Attorney since 2017. The office has 300 prosecutors.
Shea chose as his chief of staff David Metcalf, 34, who had been counsel to Barr's deputy attorney general,
Jeffrey A. Rosen.
Some high-profile investigations that Shea oversaw are related to special counsel
Robert Mueller's Russia investigation.
On May 18, 2020, Barr named Shea as the acting administrator of the
Drug Enforcement Administration
The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA; ) is a Federal law enforcement in the United States, United States federal law enforcement agency under the U.S. Department of Justice tasked with combating drug trafficking and distribution within th ...
. Trump nominated
Justin Herdman
Justin Herdman is an American lawyer who served as the United States Attorney for the Northern District of Ohio from 2017 to 2021.
Previously, Herdman was a partner in the investigations and white collar defense practice group at Jones Day, ...
to be Shea's permanent successor as U.S. Attorney, and
Michael R. Sherwin to lead the office on an interim basis.
Roger Stone sentencing
A reduced sentencing recommendation for
Roger Stone
Roger Jason Stone (born Roger Joseph Stone Jr.; August 27, 1952) is an American conservative political consultant and lobbyist.
Since the 1970s, Stone has worked on the campaigns of Republican politicians, including Richard Nixon, Ronald Rea ...
, a political consultant and Trump advisor who was found guilty of witness tampering and lying to investigators in the
Mueller investigation on Russian interference in the 2016 election, led to a national controversy in Shea's first weeks on the job.
On Feb. 11, 2020, Barr took the rare step of reducing a sentencing recommendation by four prosecutors in the U.S. Attorney's office that
President Donald Trump
Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) is an American politician, media personality, and businessman who served as the 45th president of the United States from 2017 to 2021.
Trump graduated from the Wharton School of the University of Pe ...
had called “very horrible and unfair".
Barr told ABC News that Shea had initially signaled to him that the recommendation would be about half the time that the line prosecutors requested.
Shea's name was attached to both the initial recommendation of a seven- to nine-year prison term for Stone, and Barr's version a day later that called the first version "excessive".
The four line prosecutors resigned from the case, and one resigned from the Justice Department entirely.
Assistant United States Attorney Aaron Zelinsky testified to the House Judiciary Committee that he "was explicitly told that the motivation for changing the sentencing memo was political, and because the U.S. Attorney
hea
HEA or Hea may refer to:
* Hektoen enteric agar, used in microbiology to identify certain organisms
*Higher Education Academy, in the United Kingdom
*Higher Education Act of 1965, an Act of the Congress of the United States which was supposed to s ...
was 'afraid of the President.'"
Concord Management case
In March 2020, Shea's office dropped its two-year-long prosecution of two Russian shell companies,
Concord Management and Concord Consulting, which had been charged with conspiring to defraud the United States by running a social media campaign to interfere in the
2016 presidential election.
The Justice Department said the companies were exploiting the case to gain access to information about the investigation's sources and methods that Russia could weaponize. A Mueller-related case continues against 13 Russians including a part-owner of Concord,
Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, an oligarch who is sometimes known as "Putin’s chef".
Michael Flynn case
Shea wrote the Justice Department's motion on May 7, 2020, to dismiss the charges against
Michael Flynn
Michael Thomas Flynn (born December 24, 1958) is a retired United States Army lieutenant general and conspiracy theorist who was the 24th U.S. National Security Advisor for the first 22 days of the Trump administration. He resigned in light of ...
, the former U.S. national security advisor to Donald Trump. Flynn had pled guilty to charges of lying to the
Federal Bureau of Investigation
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic intelligence and security service of the United States and its principal federal law enforcement agency. Operating under the jurisdiction of the United States Department of Justice, ...
about his conversations in 2016 with Russia's ambassador. Shea's motion said that the FBI agents’ questioning of Flynn "was untethered to, and unjustified by, the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation into Mr. Flynn." Shea alone signed the court document — an unusual departure, as court filings are usually signed by lower-level career prosecutors, not political appointees.
Criminal Division overhaul
Shortly before his departure, Shea reorganized the criminal division of the U.S. Attorney's office. Officials had discussed an overhaul of the unit for years, but some lawyers in the office were said to express concern because some prosecutors were moved out of the public corruption unit, which handles politically sensitive matters like the Roger Stone case.
Drug Enforcement Administration
Attorney General Barr named Shea as the acting administrator of the
Drug Enforcement Administration
The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA; ) is a Federal law enforcement in the United States, United States federal law enforcement agency under the U.S. Department of Justice tasked with combating drug trafficking and distribution within th ...
in May 2020.
In June 2020, Shea asked Barr to give the DEA temporary power “to enforce any federal crime committed as a result of the protests over the death of
George Floyd
George Perry Floyd Jr. (October 14, 1973 – May 25, 2020) was an African-American man who was murdered by a police officer in Minneapolis, Minnesota, during an arrest made after a store clerk suspected Floyd may have used a counterfeit twe ...
," including the authority to conduct covert surveillance on protesters. More than 100 DEA agents assisted National Guard troops in Washington during the protests.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Shea, Timothy
Living people
21st-century American lawyers
Morrissey College of Arts & Sciences alumni
Georgetown University Law Center alumni
Politicians from Fall River, Massachusetts
United States Attorneys for the District of Columbia
Drug Enforcement Administration Administrators
Trump administration personnel
Year of birth missing (living people)