The former top federal prosecutor in Massachusetts has been suspended from practicing law in the state.
Rachael Rollins, who resigned last year as U.S. attorney for Massachusetts after an investigation into ethics violations, was suspended for nonpayment of registration fees, court documents show.
As the Boston Herald first reported Tuesday, Rollins was named with other attorneys in a motion filed in January with the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court by the state's Board of Bar Overseers, which sought to suspend hundreds.
The suspensions were granted on Feb. 20.
In January of 2022, Rollins was sworn in as U.S. attorney for Massachusetts, becoming the first Black woman to serve in that role.
Just 16 months later, she announced her resignation after a monthslong investigation by the Justice Department's inspector general. In a report to President Joe Biden, the U.S. Office of Special Council alleged that Rollins "willfully violated the Hatch Act on multiple occasions, thereby exhibiting an extraordinary abuse of power."
The report elaborated that Rollins, who ended her tenure as Suffolk County's district attorney to become the state's top federal prosecutor, leaked information to the media in an effort to sabotage the campaign of her successor, Kevin Hayden, in support of challenger Ricardo Arroyo.
As State House News Service wrote Monday, Rollins has taken a part-time job as a special projects administrator at Roxbury Community College, where she was hired to work on the school's new Project to Support Returning Citizens.
Joyce Taylor Gibson, the school's executive vice president of academic and student affairs, said that with the project, the school plans to "develop a curriculum and services for formerly incarcerated individuals, particularly women of color," to help people leaving prison "gain critical knowledge and develop valuable relationships, skills, and tools needed to successfully reenter the neighborhoods and larger communities where they live."
Gibson said that Rollins "brings over 25 years of legal and leadership experience to this grant-funded role."
State payroll data made available by the state comptroller's office shows that Rollins' annual pay rate is $96,000 for the RCC role and that she has been paid $7,339 this year as of Feb. 24.
