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THURSDAY, JANUARY 24, 2002

A South Dakota attorney with experience in Indian law is up for the U.S. Attorney's job.

James McMahon, a Sioux Falls attorney formerly of the law firm Boyce, Murphy, McDowell & Greenfield, has been recommended for the job by Rep. John Thune (R-S.D.). President Bush would have to nominate McMahon to make it official.

At the law firm, McMahon represented the Sisseton-Wahpeton Tribe in a dispute over the disbursement of a land claim judgment fund for Sisseton and Wahpeton tribal members. The tribe was challenging how the Department of Interior was verifying who could receive the money.

After being allowed to intervene, a federal court in September 2001 dismissed the tribe's claim and ruled Secretary Gale Norton could be allowed to trace the ancestry of tribal members for the purposes of disbursement.

In another case, McMahon and his law firm defended Russell Hawkins, the former chairman of the tribe. It was a highly publicized affair, as Hawkins and others, including a former Bureau of Indian Affairs official, were the focus of a scandal over surplus government equipment.

Hawkins and others had set up a company which would obtain the equipment for various tribes, including his own tribe and the Seminole Tribe of Florida. The company would then buy the equipment from the tribe at a deeply discounted price and then resell it.

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Thune nominates U.S. Attorney (The Sioux Falls Argus Leader 1/24)