MOBILE — The U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Alabama marked Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday with an historical event of its own — Alabama's first African-American U.S. Attorney was sworn in Jan. 15 at the John Archibald Campbell Federal Courthouse in Mobile.

Kenyen Ray Brown was nominated for the position by United States President Barack Obama in August 2009, and was confirmed by the Senate the following November. He assumed his duties as U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Alabama Dec. 4, 2009.

Brown earned a bachelor's degree in communications from the University of Alabama, and in 1995 received a law degree from the University of Tennessee Law School.

The ceremony included a walk down memory lane, beginning with remarks from Brown's first employer out of law school, Ellen Brooks, district attorney for Alabama's 15th Judicial Circuit in Montgomery. Brooks said she knew then Brown was destined for great things.

"In 1995, I signed him on (as prosecutor) for a one-year contract and he immediately began prosecuting misdemeanor cases. After eight months, just as I was preparing to give him his first jury case, he came to my office looking troubled," she said. "He had been offered a job as assistant U.S. attorney."

Brooks said Brown was distressed at not fulfilling his one-year obligation, but said "his calling was for the attorney's office in Mobile. I was happy for him because I knew he had a bright future."

Retired District Judge Lynn Clardy Bright, who presided over the 15th Judicial Circuit during Brown's short tenure as a prosecutor, agreed Brown stood out among the other attorneys.

"Serving as a public prosecutor is a trial by fire," she said, noting that seasoned defense attorneys are like sharks circling young upstart attorneys. "We had huge dockets and on his first day he tried multiple cases. But he was young, energetic, bright and oh-so-polite. I thought certainly this young man had something special."

Indeed, Brown's career led him to Washington, D.C., where he has been for the last decade. During that time, he served as senior counsel and Director of Education and Training for the Senate Ethics Committee. Most recently, he served as Acting Chief Counsel and Staff Director of the House Ethics Committee.

U.S. Reps. Jo Bonner, R-Alabama, and Artur Davis, D-Alabama, were also present for the investiture. Bonner worked with Brown on the U.S. House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct, on which Bonner was the Ranking Member, and Davis was instrumental in getting Brown to his current position.

Ethics and trust were mentioned more than once during the ceremony in reference to Brown's new duties, with Brooks and Brown quoting former United States President Grover Cleveland from his Inaugural Address, March 4, 1885.

"Your every voter, as surely as your Chief Magistrate, under the same high sanction, though in a different sphere, exercises a public trust," Cleveland said, reminding every public servant that they are just that, a servant.

"You started 14 years ago as a public servant. You chose that, and I think it chose you," Brooks said. "Those in public office are the servants of the public, not the other way around. You are here for the good of the people."

"This is a good day for Alabama, because Kenyen is a true public servant," Bright added.

Even the "job description" of the United States Attorney, referred to as the Servant of the Law in the 1935 decision in Berger v. United States, reminds the officer holder of his duties to justice and the public good.

An excerpt from that decision was read by Gloria A. Bedwell, assistant United States attorney for the Southern District of Alabama, prior to the swearing in.

"The United States Attorney … whose interest, therefore, in a criminal prosecution is not that it shall win a case, but that justice shall be done,” Bedwell read.

"As such, he is in a peculiar and very definite sense the servant of the law, the twofold aim of which is that guilt shall not escape or innocence suffer.”