Florence Nakakuni '78

Florence Nakakuni served as United States Attorney for the District of Hawai'i from September 30, 2009 to March 10, 2017. She was Hawai'i’s first female U.S. Attorney. She had been a federal prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for 24 years when she was nominated by President Obama. She graduated from Kaimuki High School and attended the University of Hawai'i-Manoa where she received a B.A. in English and a B.Ed. in Secondary Education with Honors. She is a 1978 graduate of the William S. Richardson School of Law.

She began her legal career as a law clerk to the late Justice Thomas S. Ogata of the Hawai'i Supreme Court. She then worked at the U.S. Department of Justice, in Washington, D.C. for one of her law professors from Richardson. She returned to Hawai'i for a position with the Navy General Counsel’s Office at Pearl Harbor. Florence then accepted a position with the U.S. Attorney’s Office. She was hired by then-U.S. Attorney Dan Bent to handle civil and criminal cases. Later, she served as an OCDETF (Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force) attorney; Strike Force Chief and was the Chief, Drug and Organized Crime Section prior to her appointment. As U.S. Attorney, she was the chief federal law enforcement officer in the State of Hawai'i.