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“RECOGNITION OF GREGORY C. BRADY UPON HIS RETIREMENT FROM THE DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE” mentioning the U.S. Dept. of Justice was published in the Extensions of Remarks section on pages E2250-E2251 on Dec. 14, 2011.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
RECOGNITION OF GREGORY C. BRADY UPON HIS RETIREMENT FROM THE DEPARTMENT
OF JUSTICE
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HON. JEFF FORTENBERRY
of nebraska
in the house of representatives
Wednesday, December 14, 2011
Mr. FORTENBERRY. Mr. Speaker, today I would like to honor and pay tribute to Gregory C. Brady, a fellow Nebraskan and the Principal Deputy General Counsel for the Office of Justice Programs, in the U.S. Department of Justice, who is retiring after forty-six years of remarkable public service in the interests of justice. His tireless dedication to the multi-faceted work of the Department, reflected in his many career accomplishments, have earned him great respect and recognition in the Office of Justice Programs and its component agencies, and throughout the Department and among his fellow attorneys at bar. I want to take a moment to memorialize his extraordinary and inspiring accomplishments.
Greg Brady was born and reared in Nebraska, graduating from the University of Nebraska in 1962, with a Bachelor of Arts degree, and in 1965, with a Juris Doctorate.
Thereafter, Mr. Brady served a three-year tour of duty in the Judge Advocate General Corps of the U.S. Navy (from which, after prosecuting and defending scores of cases, he was honorably discharged with the rank of Lieutenant). Mr. Brady began his service with the Department of Justice in December 1968, as an Assistant United States Attorney in the District of Columbia, and has been continuously serving the Department of Justice, and the public, faithfully and in an exemplary manner ever since.
In the United States Attorney's Office, he demonstrated his flexibility of mind and zealous devotion to duty in countless criminal
(misdemeanors, felonies, grand juries, etc.) and civil cases that he litigated, at the trial and appellate levels, many of which cases involved groundbreaking questions of law. Mitchell v. Laird, for example, 488 F.2d 611 (D.C. Cir. 1973), was brought unsuccessfully by thirteen members of the U.S. House of Representatives to enjoin the involvement of U.S. military personnel in the Vietnam conflict, and involved complex Constitutional questions of standing, executive prerogative, and justiciability. United States v. Crowder, 543 F.2d 312
(D.C. Cir. 1976)--which Mr. Brady's arguments (opposed by those of Mr. Robert Bennett) initially won at the District Court, then lost before a Circuit Court panel, and then won in an en banc proceeding of the Circuit Court--was the first case in the country to approve use of a search warrant to require a suspect to submit to surgery so the police could obtain a bullet as evidence of his criminal activity. (The case against Crowder (a two-time murderer) for the murder of a prominent Washington dentist was considered weak, because the only evidence known to the police that could link him firmly to the earlier crime were the bullets lodged in his arm and leg, from his murder-victim's gun. It was Mr. Brady's idea to try to obtain a search warrant for the bullets; he also thought of the stratagem of deputizing the (anxious) physicians from Georgetown University Hospital as U.S. Marshals for purposes of the surgery. Judge McGowan's concurrence (as does Judge Leventhal's dissent) goes out of its way to praise Mr. Brady's prosecution for the procedural orderliness and fair play it consistently demonstrated in the case. The case was featured in a Time magazine article.) This kind of legal creativity and strict adherence to the rule of law remains typical of Mr. Brady, nearly thirty of whose cases are officially reported in the published court records.
Having attained the rank of Deputy Chief of the Appellate Division at the United States Attorney's Office here in the City, Mr. Brady began his career with the Justice Department's Law Enforcement Assistance Administration (the predecessor agency to the Office of Justice Programs) in February 1974, formally in the Office of the General Counsel, but actually detailed to assist in the creation and development of grant and support programs to assist States in improving the management of prosecution offices, combating career criminals, and reducing white-collar crime. His prosecutorial experience in the Navy and the United States Attorney's Office made him invaluable to the program, which, itself, is at the heart of the core mission of the Office of Justice Programs. In 1980 (at his request), Mr. Brady returned to the direct practice of law, in the agency's Office of the General Counsel, dispensing advice and rendering opinions on countless matters relating to every conceivable area of administrative law.
In 1984, on account of his vast practical and administrative experience, he was asked to found, and become the first Director of, a new Office of Justice Programs component, which eventually was to become the Office for Victims of Crime--a signal initiative of President Reagan's administration. And he did found that office, on firm and sound lines, co-authoring what eventually was enacted as the Victim Compensation and Assistance Act of 1984 (Pub. L. 98-473), which clearly sets forth the purposes and organic principles of the office--
purposes and principles that remain in place today. His mission at that office accomplished, some three years later, the leadership of the Office of Justice Programs acquiesced in Mr. Brady's request to return to its Office of the General Counsel, where he has served ever since.
He has been the principal ethics officer at the Office of Justice Programs since 1988 (in which capacity he has provided excellent guidance, training, and advice to the General Counsel, Presidential appointees, and career employees, alike), and in 1996 became the Deputy General Counsel, after having served for years as Associate General Counsel; he became Principal Deputy General Counsel in 2001.
For the last twenty-four years, Mr. Brady has applied a firm sense of purpose and integrity to instructing numberless Department employees in how to negotiate the minefields of ethical situations associated with administration of a multi-billion-dollar-a-year grant-making operation. At a time when the corporate world has endured significant ethical and moral lapses, Mr. Brady's personal efforts consistently have guided officials of the Department with a minimum of public conflict or scandal, and with the result that there is a clear public perception--
necessary to the success of any government program--of even-handedness in the administration of the Office of Justice Programs' criminal-
justice grant programs.
Mr. Brady's love of the law and its practitioners in the legal profession manifested itself in his generous devotion of time and attention to mentoring law students and newly-minted attorneys during the critical development stages of their careers. As Deputy General Counsel over the past twenty years, he has guided (even shepherded) them, with his approachable, kindly, and affable manner. His deep understanding and wide experience in the law made him an inspiring and effective teacher. Mr. Brady genuinely delighted in seeing the progress and development of attorneys, and their embrace of the highest standards of the legal profession; and the number and variety of law firms and government agencies that have been affected by individuals originally trained by him is impressive. (These include an Assistant Attorney General, as well as the Executive Director of a Government Corporation and a past Presidential appointee responsible for juvenile-
justice issues.) In the Office of the General Counsel, he has demonstrated outstanding legal research, presentation, and advocacy skills, and has been a true role model for all of the attorneys, greatly assisting in their professional development.
And ``role model'' is, in fact, the apt term: for Mr. Brady is no one-dimensional work-is-my-life attorney. Despite his aggressive work schedule, he has lived his vocation as a family man (he is the father of three adored daughters and grandfather to two no-less-adored granddaughters) to the full, and his community has known that he can be depended upon to volunteer his time for others. To give but one example: For over twenty years, he has been a night-time volunteer
(i.e., after putting in a full-day's work) at a crisis/suicide hotline in Prince William County, Virginia. In 2001, he was named their
``Exceptional Volunteer of the Year.'' His tireless volunteer work in his community and parish have earned him numerous Attorney-General commendations over the years.
It is no small thing to stress that Mr. Brady has performed all of these tasks with unfailing courtesy, professionalism, and kindness (to say nothing of his ever-present humor and sharp wit). The long and short of it is that Mr. Brady simply is someone who, quietly and unassumingly, has kept the Department of Justice (and especially the Office of Justice Programs) running. Although his career in the Department hardly has been typical (at least in that it does not mostly involve litigation), Mr. Brady epitomizes the ideal of a Department of Justice attorney. For this reason, he has received both the Attorney General's Mary C. Lawton Lifetime Service Award (one of the Department's very highest awards), as well as the Office of Justice Programs' Assistant Attorney General's Lifetime Achievement Award. And for his years of dedicated public service, he received a personal commendation from President George W. Bush.
Gregory C. Brady has dedicated his professional life to public service, and his many accomplishments during the forty-six years of that professional life are a credit to him, to his family, to his home State of Nebraska, to the Department of Justice, and to his local community of which he is such an active, generous, and vibrant member.
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