U.S. Attorney Roger Handberg leaves Middle District of Florida

A new presidential administration brings a changing of the guard in the Middle District of Florida.

The Department of Justice announced Tuesday that U.S. Attorney Roger Handberg is leaving his post.

First Assistant U.S. Attorney Sara C. Sweeney will serve as the Acting U.S. Attorney for the Middle District of Florida in his stead.

Handberg has been a career federal prosecutor since 2002. But he owed his final position among federal prosecutors to former President Joe Biden, who appointed him to the U.S. Attorney role in 2022.

In a statement announcing his departure, Handberg shared that in his role, he prioritized engagement “with the community” and made more than 100 “speeches and presentations to local organizations, bar associations, and chambers of commerce, and at other gatherings and press conferences.”

The press release credits him with stepping up prosecutions during his tenure, with a 124% increase in such in the Ocala court, 90% in Orlando, and 87% in Jacksonville. Those prosecutions spanned every major category of prosecutorial work, and made the Middle District the top one “in the country among non-border districts in charging defendants in federal court according to statistics compiled by the Administrative Office of the United States Courts for fiscal year 2024.”

“I am grateful for my colleagues at the U.S. Attorney’s Office and for our law enforcement partners for their dedication and commitment and for everything that they do, day in and day out, to keep everyone in the Middle District of Florida and the United States safe. It has been a privilege to have served as a federal prosecutor in my hometown and to have worked side-by-side with my law enforcement partners for the past 22 years,” Handberg adds.

He takes credit for a number of successful prosecutions specifically, including the first redlining settlement in Florida history against Ameris Bank of Jacksonville, and the successful prosecution of former JEA Executive Aaron Zahn.

Zahn got a four year sentence for attempting to personally profit off of an attempt to privatize the public utility, in what many Jacksonville observers regard as the most brazen fraud against the public trust in a city with no shortage of such.