U.S. Senate Confirms Vanessa Avery As CT’s 1st Black U.S. Attorney

WASHINGTON, DC — The U.S. Senate has confirmed Vanessa Roberts Avery as U.S. Attorney for the District of Connecticut. Avery was nominated in January by President Joe Biden.

Avery, a New Haven native, is the state's first Black U. S. Attorney. She will serve a four-year term.

See C-Span coverage of the confirmation here.

Avery, who has served as the Chief of the Division of Enforcement and Public Protection at the state Attorney General's Office since 2021, and as an Associate Attorney General since 2019, earned her bachelors degree from Yale University in 1996. She earned her J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center in 1999.

According to her White House biography, Avery served from 2014 to 2019 as an Assistant United States Attorney in the United States Attorney's Office for the District of Connecticut.
From 2006 to 2014, Avery was a litigation attorney at McCarter & English, LLP. From 2004 to 2005, she served as a Trial Attorney at the United States Department of Justice in the Commercial Litigation Branch of the Civil Division. And from 1999 to 2003, she was an attorney in the Hartford Trial Group at Cummings & Lockwood LLC.

Connecticut Attorney General William Tong lauded Biden's choice when it was announced in January. And Wednesday, tweeted: "This is an incredible and historic moment for Connecticut, for our legal profession, and our justice system. Vanessa Avery is everything right about public service."

"She is a daughter of New Haven and its public schools, and brings her deep CT roots and connections with her to the DOJ," Tong tweeted. "She is thoughtful, incredibly hardworking, exceptionally qualified, and the kind of colleague and team member everyone wishes to have."