Senate Rules Committee vets AG, CZM nominees

ST. CROIX — The Senate Rules and Judiciary Committee voted unanimously in favor of Gordon Rhea’s nomination to the post of Virgin Islands attorney general on Thursday.

Rhea’s nomination will be taken up by the full body during the 35th Legislature’s next session. After a stint in the Peace Corps, Rhea obtained a law degree from Stanford University Law School in 1974 with a focus on criminal and environmental law. He then worked at a criminal law firm in Los Angeles, specializing in complex criminal cases and appeals to the 9th Circuit Federal Court of Appeals.

In 1975 Rhea was tapped to serve as special assistant to the chief counsel of the Church Committee, formally known as the U.S. Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities. Afterward he was appointed to serve as an Assistant U.S. Attorney and, later Executive Assistant U.S. Attorney in Washington D.C.

By the 1980s, Rhea said his roots in the U.S. Virgin Islands already stretched back more than a decade. He accepted an offer to serve as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Virgin Islands in 1981 and later co-founded the firm Alkon and Rhea, which brought suits against the Hess Oil and Martin Marietta refineries, prosecuted product liability cases and handled a wide range of other litigation.