Springfield, IL (CAPITOL CITY NOW) – Gregory Harris, the U.S. Attorney for the Central District of Illinois, submitted his resignation to President Biden and plans to retire Thursday. Harris started in the position in 2021 and is the first Black individual to hold the position in the district’s history.
Harris got his start in Springfield after graduating from the University of Illinois Chicago School of Law. In 1976, he joined the Illinois Office of the State Appellate Defender as an Assistant Deputy Defender representing indigent defendants on appeal.
Prior to his nomination as U.S. Attorney in 2021, Harris served as an Assistant United States Attorney for more than thirty years.
Harris left the U.S. Attorney’s Office in 1988 and joined Giffin, Winning, Cohen and Bodewes, eventually becoming the first Black equity partner at a major Springfield law firm, where he specialized in employment litigation and criminal defense. He returned to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in 2001.
During his tenure, his office prosecuted several high-profile cases. These included the conviction of Illinois correctional officers for the death of inmate Larry Earvin, former Illinois State Senator Sam McCann for campaign fund fraud and tax evasion, and a California man involved in a $22 million investment fraud scheme affecting more than 50 victims in Illinois. His work also addressed human trafficking, leading to life sentences in forced labor cases involving physical and sexual abuse.
Under Harris’s leadership, millions of taxpayer dollars were recovered through civil fraud actions, including a $12.5 million settlement with a Southern Illinois hospital that had overbilled federal healthcare programs.
Additional cases that were prosecuted during Harris’s tenure and are pending sentencing include the conviction of a Danville man for carjacking and murder, among other crimes; the weeks-long trial and convictions of two Quad Cities men for a violent string of armed robberies in that area that involved shootings, pistol whippings, and assaults; and the conviction of two Decatur siblings for the kidnapping of a local businessman.
His office is also presently prosecuting cases against a Springfield man and others allegedly involving area prostitution businesses fronting as massage parlors.
