Professor Blanchard is an Assistant U.S. Attorney (AUSA) in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia, where he serves as the Chief of the Major Crimes Unit. In that role, he manages a team of AUSAs prosecuting complex violent crimes, racketeering offenses, human trafficking, and civil rights violations. Professor Blanchard also serves as the office coordinator for Project Safe Neighborhoods initiatives and as a member of the district-wide Committee on Race, Policing, and Prosecution. During his time as an AUSA, Professor Blanchard has prosecuted gang murders, child exploitation offenses, armed robberies, human rights abuses, illicit opioid distribution, gun trafficking, identity theft, armed drug dealing, counterfeiting, and bankruptcy fraud. He has first-chaired numerous jury trials and successfully defended convictions on appeal. Professor Blanchard received a B.A. with distinction in 2007 from the University of Virginia. He received a J.D. in 2011 from the University of Virginia School of Law, where he served on the editorial board of the Virginia Law Review, received the Rosenbloom Award from the faculty, and served as fundraising director of the Public Interest Law Association. Earlier in his career, Professor Blanchard was a law clerk to the Hon. Norman K. Moon, U.S. District Court for the Western District of Virginia, and to the Hon. Paul V. Niemeyer, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.
