In 2010, Roy Austin returned to his roots as a federal prosecutor, taking a leadership role at the U.S. Justice Department with oversight of the civil rights division’s criminal cases.

After prosecuting hate crimes and police brutality cases years earlier, Austin relished the opportunity to supervise the division’s criminal section—the cases that, “as a baby attorney, I did and loved,” he said. He was less familiar with a separate team under his guise: the civil rights division’s special litigation section.