West Palm Beach attorney Bruce Reinhart will step into a new role as a federal magistrate judge starting Monday, the Southern District of Florida announced.

Reinhart was selected from 64 applicants for the seat, which became vacant after the retirement of U.S. Magistrate Judge James Hopkins. He will sit in the Paul G. Rogers U.S. Courthouse in West Palm Beach.

The new magistrate's 31-year career includes more than a decade as a federal prosecutor and roles at both the U.S. Treasury and Justice departments.

The New Jersey native earned his bachelor's degree from Princeton University. After his 1987 graduation from the University of Pennsylvania Law School, he clerked for U.S. District Judge Norma Shapiro in Philadelphia.

Reinhart then joined the Justice Department, where he conducted public integrity investigations and prosecutions. In 1994, he accepted a policy role at the Treasury, where he drafted the department's law enforcement strategic plan.

The attorney moved to South Florida to become a federal prosecutor in 1996, moving up the ladder to become a supervisory assistant U.S. attorney. In 2008, he went into private practice with McDonald Hopkins and then formed his own white-collar criminal defense and complex litigation firm, Bruce E. Reinhart P.A.

According to his website, he has tried more than 50 cases to verdict, worked on more than 100 federal grand jury investigations and argued before three U.S. Courts of Appeals. Reinhart has also represented indigent defendants as a Criminal Justice Act attorney, volunteered his time through the Justice Department's Clemency Project and held a seat on the Palm Beach County Commission on Ethics.