Christina Nolan, the former U.S. Attorney for Vermont, is exploring running for the U.S. Senate as a Republican.
“I am definitely exploring the possibility, but I am not yet ready to announce a formal decision or make a formal announcement,” she wrote in an email to VTDigger. Nolan filed candidacy paperwork with the Federal Elections Commission late last week.
She is the most high-profile GOP official thus far to publicly consider entering the race to replace U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., who announced in November he would not run for re-election this year. Republican Gov. Phil Scott has ruled out a run. On the Democratic side, Vermont’s sole congressman in the U.S. House of Representatives, Peter Welch, has already thrown his hat in the ring for Leahy’s seat.
Nolan was named Vermont’s top federal prosecutor in 2017 by President Donald Trump with bipartisan recommendations from Scott and Leahy. She was the first woman to hold the post in Vermont.
Nolan resigned her role as U.S. attorney in 2021 when Biden took office, as is customary for federal prosecutors when presidential administrations turn over. She currently works at Sheehey Furlong & Behm, a Burlington law firm, and specializes in white collar defense, health care and internal investigations.
Considered a hardliner on gun and drug offenses who sometimes clashed with progressive county prosecutors, Nolan nevertheless earned compliments from reformers and defense attorneys for taking a relatively measured and apolitical approach during her tenure.
“I frankly was impressed with the way she maintained some balance even in the face of a pretty conservative, and I might even say, right-leaning administration,” Robert Sand, the founding director of Vermont Law School’s Center for Justice Reform, told VTDigger when she stepped down.
Her office pursued an indictment and obtained one conviction in the largest fraud case in the state’s history, the Jay Peak scandal, and also played a key role in a deceptive marketing case that resulted in a more than $8 billion settlement with opioid manufacturer Purdue Pharma.
