Nikolas “Kolo” Kerest of Shelburne is now in charge of the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Vermont.
He took the oath of office Friday afternoon from Chief Federal Judge Geoffrey Crawford.
Kerest could not be reached Friday for comment. In a statement issued late Friday, he praised the past work of those in the office he will now oversee.
“We will continue to work tirelessly with our law enforcement and community partners to pursue equal justice under the law and to protect and serve the people of Vermont,” he said.
The U.S. Senate confirmed Kerest’s nomination this week by a voice vote, making him the top federal prosecutor in Vermont. He had been an assistant U.S. attorney in the Vermont office.
He was nominated by President Joe Biden for the job in September, following a recommendation by U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt.
“Kolo is an exemplary prosecutor, dedicated to upholding the rule of law and putting the interests of Vermonters first, above all else,” Leahy said in a statement after Kerest’s confirmation. “As a former prosecutor myself, I am confident that Kolo has just what it takes to keep our communities safe while also honoring Vermont’s values.”
Kerest replaces Christina Nolan, who stepped down in February as the presidential administration changed from Donald Trump, a Republican, to Biden, a Democrat.
Another assistant U.S. attorney, Jonathan Ophardt, had been serving as acting U.S. attorney for Vermont. In an email Friday, Ophardt said that he will return to his role as first assistant U.S attorney.
Kerest will oversee an office that has 24 attorneys and 27 non-attorney support staff. The office has a budget of about $8 million. The salary for the U.S. attorney position is $172,500.
Kerest, 48, earned a bachelor’s degree from Williams College in 1994 and his law degree from Cornell Law School in 2000.
He has worked in the criminal division of the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Vermont since 2019. Before that, he was chief of the office’s civil division and served as the office’s civil rights coordinator.
Before his work as a prosecutor, Kerest was in private practice, including at law firms in Maine and Boston.
The confirmation process did not require Kerest to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee, which approved his confirmation with two dissenting votes — from Sens. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee and Josh Hawley of Missouri, both Republicans.
Kerest did fill out a 24-page questionnaire from the committee about his education, professional experience and his work on cases.
In addition to his legal work, Kerest was manager and sailing instructor at the Block Island Club in Rhode Island in the summers of 1994 and 1995, and was the sailing news editor for the Sailing News in Boston from June 1996 to August 1997.
Kerest has been a member of the Vermont, Maine, Massachusetts and American bar associations.
Asked to describe the 10 most “significant litigated matters” he took part in, Kerest cited a case that resulted in a $155 million settlement with an electronic health care records company. That company was alleged to have misrepresented what its software could do and paid kickbacks to some of its customers who promoted its use.
Among the many matters Kerest will need to address as Vermont’s U.S. attorney are sentence recommendations in the criminal cases against Bill Stenger, Jay Peak’s former CEO and president; Ariel Quiros, the resort’s former owner; and William Kelly, a key adviser to Quiros.
They were all indicted in May 2019 in connection with a failed project to build a biomedical research center in Newport that never got off the ground, despite raising more than $80 million from foreign investors through the federal EB-5 visa program.
All three have reached plea deals with prosecutors and are awaiting sentencing. Quiros faces up to eight years in prison, Stenger five years and Kelly three years. Prosecutors can recommend a sentence up to those maximums, while their attorneys can argue for lesser sentences.
His office will also oversee the prosecution of several defendants in the killing of Michael Pimental in Waterford in October 2018. Initially, federal prosecutors had considered pursuing the death penalty in the case but have since dropped it.