Attorney General Pam Bondi has appointed Eric Grant as the Interim U.S. Attorney for the region that includes Fresno, Sacramento, and other Central Valley cities.

The Department of Justice said in a new release that the Valley-raised Grant was sworn in Monday morning.

Grant’s title will include the “interim” tag until his nomination is confirmed. He replaces acting U.S. Attorney Kimberly Sanchez, who was appointed to that post on July 16.

Sanchez, a Republican, followed acting U.S. Attorney Michele Beckwith, a Democrat. The Trump administration fired Beckwith.

Beckwith served five months in the post after following Phillip A. Talbert, a Democrat. He resigned two months after Donald Trump won the 2024 presidential election.

Sanchez Now First Assistant

Sanchez will now serve as First Assistant in the Sacramento office, the DOJ said.

When this story first published, a DOJ spokesperson said Sanchez returned to her post as chief of the Fresno office. The Fresno position remains vacant.

An acting U.S. Attorney is predetermined by the Vacancies Act, and may serve up to 300 days. At any time, the Attorney General can appoint an interim attorney for up to 120 days without Senate confirmation. If the 120 days expire, the chief district judge may make an appointment until there is a full-time confirmed attorney.

Valley-Raised Grant Is a DOJ Veteran

Grant grew up in Modesto and raised his family in Sacramento County. He attended the University of California, Berkeley, from which he earned a bachelor’s degree in economics (1986) and a law degree (1990).

He is a veteran of the Department of Justice, having served twice in Washington, D.C. From 1991 to 1993 he was an attorney-adviser in the Office of Legal Counsel. And during the first Trump administration, he served as a Deputy Assistant Attorney General in Environment and Natural Resources.

A Federalist Society profile of Grant states:

“On two occasions, he led the teams that ran the gamut from the district court to the Ninth Circuit to the U.S. Supreme Court to obtain extraordinary relief in high-profile cases — involving the Keystone XL Pipeline and ‘kids against climate change.’ ”

‘Honored to Rejoin DOJ’

Said Grant in a news release: “I am honored to rejoin the Department of Justice to lead an excellent team of lawyers and other public servants in our shared mission to enhance public safety and the rule of law in Northern California. I look forward to working with that team and with our federal, state, local, and tribal partners in law enforcement and otherwise to accomplish that mission.”

Grant has decades of experience in private practice in Washington, D.C. and Sacramento. That experience includes arguments in the U.S. Supreme Court, the California Supreme Court, and other federal and state courts. He served as a law clerk to the late Chief Justice Warren E. Burger and to Associate Justice Clarence Thomas.

The Eastern District encompasses 34 counties in the Central Valley and the Sierra, from the Oregon border in the north to the Los Angeles County line in the south. The office has 72 attorneys and 61 non-attorney staff with offices in Sacramento, Fresno, and Bakersfield.

(GV Wire senior reporter David Taub contributed to this story.)