U.S. Department
of Justice
Zachary A. Cunha was nominated by President Joseph R. Biden, Jr., in September 2021 to serve as United States Attorney for the District of Rhode Island. Mr. Cunha was confirmed by the United States Senate in December 2021 and serves as the chief federal law enforcement officer for Rhode Island.
An attorney for two decades, Mr. Cunha has spent the bulk of his career with the Department of Justice, serving in three United States Attorney’s Offices: the District of Rhode Island, the District of Massachusetts, and the Eastern District of New York, where he was first appointed as an Assistant United States Attorney in 2005.
As an Assistant U.S. Attorney, Mr. Cunha handled and supervised a number of nationally significant civil and criminal cases, notably in the area of health care fraud. In 2010, he was recognized with the Attorney General’s Award for Exceptional Service, the highest honor conferred by the Department of Justice, for his work on the prosecution team handling a series of related investigations of Pfizer Pharmaceuticals; those investigations resulted in a recovery of $2.3 billion dollars, representing the largest civil and criminal healthcare fraud recovery made by the United States as of that time. Before joining the Justice Department, Mr. Cunha began his legal career on September 10, 2001, when he was sworn in as an Assistant Corporation Counsel for the City of New York.
Mr. Cunha received his Bachelor of Arts, with honors, from Brown University in 1998, and his Juris Doctorate, also with honors, from the George Washington University Law School in 2001.