Lots of Experienced Talent Available for Biden to Appoint to U.S. Attorney’s Office and Federal Bench

President Joe Biden has a couple of important justice jobs to fill in South Dakota. Obama-appointee Judge Jeffrey Viken will be retiring from the U.S. District Court’s Rapid City bench October 1, and Trump-appointee Ron Parsons is resigning from South Dakota’s U.S. Attorney position effective Friday.

So, legal eagles, help President Biden out: whom should he appoint?

I’d recommend James Leach of Rapid City for either position, but I’d hate to lose his able services while our challenge to South Dakota’s unnecessarily and burdensomely early initiative petition deadlines still hangs in the balance!

So what other talented and experienced justice-doers are available for these important jobs? For starters….

• Tatewin Means was Attorney General for the Oglala Sioux Tribe from 2012 through 2017. She ran for South Dakota attorney general in 2018. Means would be only the second woman to hold the job (current federal Judge Karen Schreier held the post in the 1990s) and only the second Lakota person (the first: Terry Pechota under President Carter).
• Taneeza Islam has been handling immigration law in Sioux Falls since 2013. Like Means, Islam is keenly interested in equal justice for our growing minority populations.
• Annie Hoffman is in her ninth year working as Assistant U.S. Attorney in Sioux Falls. She could bring some helpful continuity to the prosecutor’s office.
• Tamara Nash has served as a special assistant to the U.S. Attorney since 2016. The American Bar Association recognized her as one of its top 40 young lawyers in 2019.
• Kasey Olivier of Sioux Falls is currently the president of the South Dakota Trial Lawyers. She has earned a variety of professional recognitions since she entered law practice in 2013.

Please don’t consider my list exhaustive; I welcome (and I’m sure President Biden welcomes) other suggestions for these two important federal positions. But remember: as Jason Ravnsborg has unably demonstrated, South Dakota needs jurists with talent and courtroom experience to effectively serve justice.