U.S. Attorney Delia L. Smith has “departed” the U.S. Attorney’s Office and will be replaced by First Assistant U.S. Attorney Adam F. Sleeper, it was announced Monday.
In a press release sent just after 5 p.m., the U.S. Attorney’s Office of the Virgin Islands announced Smith’s “departure” and said Sleeper will be designated acting U.S. attorney for the district under the Vacancies Reform Act.
The brief announcement — just four paragraphs long — did not offer a reason for Smith’s departure but in February President Donald Trump ordered the U.S. Justice Department to fire all Biden-era U.S. attorneys, claiming the department had been “politicized like never before,” according to news reports at the time.
Smith, a native of St. John who served with the office since 2005, was nominated by President Joe Biden for the top post in September 2021 and confirmed in April 2022.
U.S. attorneys are appointed by the president, while the attorney general is either elected by the people or appointed by the governor, as is the case in the USVI.
According to Monday’s press release, Sleeper is a career prosecutor with the United States Attorney’s Office. He has served as First Assistant U.S. Attorney and as Appellate Chief.
Sleeper received an undergraduate degree from Connecticut College and a law degree from Cornell Law School. Before joining the Department of Justice, he clerked for Judge Curtis Gómez of the District Court of the Virgin Islands and Judge Joel Carson III of the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit. He also worked as an associate in the Boston, Massachusetts office of an international law firm, the release stated.
