Jessica D. Aber, a longtime prosecutor who rose to become one of the few women to lead the prestigious U.S. attorney’s office in Northern Virginia, died overnight at her home in Alexandria, according to her former colleagues.
Ms. Aber’s death, at age 43, came two months after she resigned as U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia to make way for President Donald Trump to select her successor. President Joe Biden had nominated her to the post in 2021.
At the time of her departure, she said working to restore trust in law enforcement had been a priority of her tenure leading the high-profile office, which also was spent focusing on terrorism cases, violent gang crimes and leaks of classified documents. Alexandria police said officers responded to a call for service at Aber’s home shortly after 9 a.m. Saturday and found her deceased, adding that the Virginia medical examiner would determine the cause and manner of death.
Colleagues described Ms. Aber, who spent most of her career prosecuting white-collar crime in the district’s Richmond office, as an affable manager with a sharp eye for details. She often sat in the courtroom gallery for major trials or key hearings in high-profile cases, and was seen as a mentor by younger prosecutors.
“Jess was brilliant, but far more important was her sense for justice, her humanity and her ability to change the world in a positive way even during her brief time with us,” said U.S. District Judge M. Hannah Lauck, whom Ms. Aber clerked for and described as a mentor. “My clerk family has lost its rock, and I have lost a friend. She was a gold soul and I am proud to have known her.”
“She was unmatched as a leader, mentor, and prosecutor, and she is simply irreplaceable as a human being,” U.S. Attorney Erik S. Siebert, Ms. Aber’s interim successor, said in a statement. “We remain in awe of how much she accomplished in her all too brief time in this world.”
“She loved EDVA and EDVA loved her back,” Siebert added, using the office’s unofficial moniker.
In an interview this year with The Washington Post, Ms. Aber said she logged more than 50,000 miles on her Hyundai as she crisscrossed Virginia to meet with students and community groups in an effort to improve relationships between law enforcement and the people they serve. She conceded then that the task was difficult, in an age of widely reported police killings of unarmed Black people, civil unrest and calls to “defund the police.”
Her message: “We follow the facts and the law, trying to do it in an entirely apolitical way.”
Born in Walnut Creek, California, in 1981, Ms. Aber established herself as a lawyer in Virginia’s capital city, attaining an undergraduate degree from the University of Richmond in 2003 and a law degree from the William & Mary School of Law in 2006.
She was a law clerk for Lauck, who was then a magistrate judge, in Richmond. Ms. Aber was one of the prosecutors who obtained a jury conviction for former Virginia governor Robert F. McDonnell on corruption charges in 2014. The Supreme Court overturned the convictions.
In January, she cited a conviction for Siemens Energy Inc., a U.S. subsidiary of the German conglomerate Siemens Energy AG, last year in a corporate espionage case, among her office’s key accomplishments. The subsidiary pleaded guilty to stealing secrets from competitors General Electric and Mitsubishi, which were bidding along with Siemens on a new power plant proposal in Virginia. Siemens agreed to a $104 million penalty. But more important was the criminal conviction on the company’s record, Ms. Aber said, after years in which prosecutors often used more lenient alternatives for corporate misbehavior, such as deferred-prosecution agreements.
Joshua Stueve, a former Justice Department spokesman who worked closely with Ms. Aber for a decade, recalled her sharp legal acumen and “bright smile, infectious laugh, and relentless humility and grace.” (Ms. Aber, he said, was also a formidable baker who once won an award at the Virginia State Fair for her chocolate chip cookies.)
“I remember her warmth, her compassion, her humor and the unfailing kindness she showed to everyone around her,” Stueve said.
As the top federal law enforcement officer in the eastern half of Virginia, Aber oversaw one of the most important portfolios of legal cases for the Justice Department. She managed roughly 300 lawyers and staff across a jurisdiction spanning Northern Virginia and the Hampton Roads region, including the port facilities in Norfolk and the state’s center of power in Richmond. Many of the nation’s defense and intelligence agencies have headquarters in that region.
Raj Parekh, who was acting U.S. attorney before Ms. Aber took office, said she kept a photograph on her desk of herself speaking to a child at a local event to remind her colleagues that “taking the time to educate others can make a profound difference for the next generation.”
Before Ms. Aber was U.S. attorney, and while she was still stationed in Richmond, Parekh recalled, she would drive to Alexandria each week to pitch in during the short-staffed days of the coronavirus pandemic.
“Jess’s life and legacy will forever be etched in the hearts of those who had the special privilege of working with her,” said Parekh, who then served as Ms. Aber’s top deputy for nearly her entire term.
