Joon Kim, who is returning to Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton after serving as acting U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, said the Southern District kept up its priorities and independence in the aftermath of Preet Bharara's firing.

Kim, 46, rejoined Cleary on Monday as a partner in its enforcement and litigation group. He has spent close to decade of his career at the firm, including as a summer associate, associate and partner, with stints in government in between. He left the Southern District office in January.

With Kim as acting U.S. attorney, the office took on trials of Turkish banker Mehmet Hakan Atilla, who was convicted of conspiring to evade U.S. sanctions; sports gambler Billy Walters, who was found guilty of insider trading; and “Chelsea bomber” Ahmad Rahimi, who was sentenced to life in prison.

Kim and other prosecutors prepared for trials in high-profile public corruption cases, including Joseph Percoco, a former adviser to Gov. Andrew Cuomo, and the retrials of Sheldon Silver, the former speaker of the New York Assembly, and Dean Skelos, a former Republic state Senate majority leader.

Meanwhile, during Kim's tenure as acting U.S. attorney, New York suffered two terrorists acts, including a bombing attack near the New York Port Authority Bus Terminal in December and a truck attack in October in lower Manhattan. Both events led to charges by the Southern District.

Kim became acting U.S. attorney in March 2017, after President Donald Trump fired Bharara, who had refused to quit after the president initially asked him to stay on.

“The circumstances” of Bharara's departure “were unusual and in many ways challenging,” Kim said in an interview Monday. “It was personally sad for me to see his term as U.S. attorney sort of end in that way, but I recognized that as the acting U.S. attorney I needed to ensure the office's work continued.”

“It was a priority of mine to ensure that people in the office understood that the great work of the assistant U.S. attorneys was going to continue unabated and uninterrupted,” he said.

“The U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York has a lot of independence and we were able to continue that level of independence,” Kim said.

He declined to comment on whether he saw interference from the Trump administration on government work outside the Southern District. He also declined to comment on whether he had any disagreements or differences with the Justice Department while running the office.

Under the Trump administration, the Justice Department has sought more resources to combat the opioid epidemic and to crack down on illegal immigration. Kim said the Southern District office's work “largely continued in a very similar manner” after the change in administration. “Obviously there are some shifts in priority that can occur,” he said, but he added he didn't observe a significant shift in the office's priorities during his term.

Overall, he said his work as acting U.S. attorney was “incredibly rewarding and humbling experience.”

“I expect and hope that the office's work continues in the finest traditions, and from what I can see today, it appears to be doing so,” Kim said, when asked about the current Southern District U.S. attorney, Geoffrey Berman, a former Greenberg Traurig partner.

Kim said he still keeps in touch with Bharara, whom he's known since 2000. “We were colleagues and we're friends,” he said. “I found him to be a great leader of a storied office, and I enjoyed working with him and it was a privilege to serve in the office while he was the U.S. attorney,” he said.

After Bharara's exit, he said, “I was impressed with the way the AUSAs continued to do their job well and continued to be incredibly active and productive, and I think the work itself keeps the morale of the office up and it did.” Kim pointed to an uptick in the number of trials while he was acting U.S. attorney.

Firm Ties

Kim has practiced nowhere else but Cleary in his private career. He joined the firm in 1997 as an associate before leaving to serve as an assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District from 2000 to 2006. He returned to Cleary in 2006 and was elected partner three years later.

He joined the Southern District office again in 2013, and in the last five years, he has served as deputy U.S. attorney, chief of the Criminal Division and chief counsel to the U.S. attorney before becoming acting U.S. attorney.

When his term was up as acting U.S. attorney, Kim said he was approached by other firms and opportunities. But returning to Cleary was “the right thing for me,” Kim said, citing his familiarity with the firm, its collegiality and its “unique combination of legal excellence with an international footprint.”

At Cleary, Kim joins Lev Dassin, another former acting U.S. attorney of the Southern District. He said he anticipates focusing on white-collar criminal defense work, including internal investigations, civil and commercial litigation and international arbitration. In representing corporations that have criminal or regulatory exposure, he said he also hopes to devote more of his practice to advisory work and crisis management.

After five years of government service, Kim returns to one of the most profitable firms on Wall Street. According to The American Lawyer, average profits per partner at Cleary were $3.3 million in 2016, ranking the firm 10th among Am Law 100 firms that year.