Andrew S. Boutros

Andrew S. Boutros is an American lawyer, law professor, and former federal prosecutor, who has served as the United States Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois since April 2025. He has prosecuted corporate fraud and cybercrime cases, including Chicago-based Silk Road cases. He was elected to the American Law Institute in 2015. He was the Regional Chair of Dechert LLP's White Collar practice, based in the firm's Chicago and Washington, D.C., offices.

In May 2026, Boutros dismissed all charges in the "Broadview Six" immigration protest case after his staff's grand jury misconduct was revealed. He received judicial criticism for continuing to defend the prosecution's underlying merits, after what the trial judge described as the worst prosecutorial misconduct she had ever seen during the case's grand jury phase, all of which occurred on Boutros's watch.

Education and early career

Boutros is a first-generation American whose parents emigrated from Egypt.

His work included prosecuting individuals connected to the Silk Road online black market. He assisted in the prosecution Ross Ulbricht, the founder of Silk Road, who received a life sentence after conviction He also led the prosecution of Cornelis Jan "SuperTrips" Slomp, described by the government as the Silk Road's "most prolific online drug dealer, who received a ten-year prison sentence in May 2015. In September 2019, he joined Dechert LLP as Regional Chair of the U.S. white-collar practice. He worked in both the Chicago and Washington, D.C. offices of Dechert. Since 2011, Boutros has been a lecturer in law at the University of Chicago Law School, On July 24, 2025, the U.S. District Court in Chicago entered an order approving the appointment, effective August 5, 2025.

In May 2026, Boutros made a rare personal courtroom appearance to dismiss all remaining charges against the "Broadview Six," a group of political figures and activists indicted in October 2025 for protesting outside of an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility. The dismissal followed disclosures of extensive prosecutorial misconduct by the assistant U.S. Attorneys handling the grand jury proceedings, which included improper "prosecutorial vouching" and the dismissal of grand jurors who openly disagreed with the government's case.

While Boutros stated he was entirely unaware of the specific grand jury infractions until late April 2026 and took official responsibility for his office's failures, he heavily criticized the defendants' behavior during the dismissal hearing, calling it "unacceptable in a civilized society." This drew a sharp rebuke from U.S. District Judge April Perry, who admonished Boutros for "significantly undercutting" his apology by continuing to publicly vilify the defendants.

In May 2026, The New York Times reported that Boutros had opened an investigation into whether E. Jean Carroll, a former magazine writer whom President Trump sexually assaulted and defamed, committed perjury in her civil lawsuits against Trump. The investigation focuses on whether she was truthful about the funding of her legal bills by a nonprofit founded by billionaire Reid Hoffman, a prominent critic of Trump's.

While Boutros has presided over the federal prosecutor's office in Chicago, grand juries have rejected several of the office's attempts to bring charges, a setback that The New York Times called "a once-rare rebuke," and so many high-level staffers have left that Boutros had to send out a letter inviting recent retirees to come back to work.

In August 2026, the New York Times reported that in August 2025 Boutros had subpoenaed a Democratic fund-raising firm whose vice president was Judge Juan Merchan's daughter Loren until late 2024 for internal communications with clients that included former vice president Kamala Harris, former president Joe Biden, Governor Kathy Hochul of New York, Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, and the Democratic National Committee. Prosecutors later limited the subpoena to a $468 payment from Harris's 2024 presidential campaign and emails between Merchan and his daughter. According to the New York Times, the "language in the subpoena is virtually identical to claims made" by a House committee that Trump's conviction in the New York hush-money trial was "potentially politically motivated".

Recognition and awards

Boutros is a member of the American Law Institute and the American Bar Foundation. and the ABA gave him the Norm Maleng Minister of Justice Award in 2014.

Publications "Treating Medical Malpractice Claims under a Variant of the Business Judgment Rule", with Jeffrey O'Connell, 77 Notre Dame Law Rev. 373 (2002) "Deferred Prosecution Agreements: A View from the Trenches and a Proposal for Reform", with F. Joseph Warin, 93 Va. L. Rev. Brief 121 (2007–2008) "Carbon Copy Prosecutions: A Growing Anticorruption Phenomenon in a Shrinking World", with T. Markus Funk, 2012 U. Chi. Legal F. 259 (2012) "Another Bite at the Apple: Transnational Crimes Face Repeat Punishment", 39 Litig. 43 (2013) The ABA Compliance Officer's Deskbook, with James T. O'Reilly, T. Markus Funk (2018)