PERSON: Joyce Vance

Professor

Joyce Alene White Vance (born July 22, 1960) is an American lawyer who served as the United States attorney for the Northern District of Alabama from 2009 to 2017. She was one of the first five U.S. attorneys, and the first female U.S. attorney, nominated by President Barack Obama.

Joyce White Vance (née Joyce Alene White) was born on July 22, 1960, in St. George, Utah. She was raised by a single mother in the middle-class Los Angeles suburb of Monterey Park, California. She received a Bachelor of Arts magna cum laude from Bates College in Lewiston, Maine, in 1982 and a Juris Doctor from the University of Virginia School of Law in 1985.

Vance was a litigator in private practice at Bradley Arant Boult Cummings LLP in Washington, D.C., before joining the United States Attorney’s Office in the Northern District of Alabama in 1991. She spent 10 years in the Criminal Division, working on investigations including that of Eric Robert Rudolph, who bombed a Birmingham abortion clinic and killed a police officer and set a string of church fires in the district. She successfully prosecuted five Boaz, Alabama, police officers charged with Conspiracy to Violate Civil Rights. She moved to the Appellate Division in 2002 and became the Chief of that Division in 2005.

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