Tenpas resigns as prosecutor

Ronald Tenpas resigned as U.S. attorney for the Southern District last month and became an associate deputy U.S. attorney general in Washington, D.C., on Nov. 14.

A former law clerk to Chief Justice William Rehnquist, Tenpas was an assistant U.S. attorney in Florida and Maryland before his appointment in November 2003 to the Illinois office in Fairview Heights.

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Assistant U.S. attorney Virginia M. Kendall of Chicago, deputy chief of the Criminal Division, has been nominated for appointment to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District.

A graduate of the Loyola University School of Law who has been honored by the FBI and Chicago Crime Commission, Kendall would succeed Judge Suzanne B. Conlon, who took senior status last year.

Circuit court news

Chief Judge Timothy C. Evans has received 267 applications from candidates for eight Cook County Circuit Court associate judgeships. The field will be reduced to 16 candidates after bar association evaluations.

Among the applicants are former appointed judges Lisa R. Curcio, Orville E. Hambright Jr., Sheldon A. Harris, Martha A. Mills and Robert Quinlivan, as well as Leonard Murray, past chair of the ISBA Committee on Judicial Evaluations and the Alliance Executive Committee.

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Retired Cook County judge James C. Murray Jr. has been recalled for a term that began Nov. 7 and will end June 30, 2008.

Edwardsville attorney Don W. Weber, former Madison County state's attorney, has been appointed as a judge of the 3rd Circuit. He succeeds Phillip J. Kardis, who retired Sept. 2. Weber's appointment ends Dec. 4, 2006.

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Cook County Judge Gerald Bender, a founder of the Jewish Judges Association, attended the funeral of Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal in Israel in September. Bender, who is a past president of the Decalogue Society, was Wiesenthal's legal counsel in the Midwest for 20 years.