Gordon C. Rhea earned his B.A. degree with honors from Indiana University, his Master’s degree from Harvard University, and his law degree from Stanford University Law School. He began his legal career in Los Angeles, where he defended complex criminal cases, and then moved to Washington, D.C., where he served as Special Assistant to the Chief Counsel of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Activities. His work there involved obtaining documents, deposing witnesses, writing reports, drafting legislation, and preparing Senators Church and Mondale for hearings. He played a major role in investigating and drafting the Senate Committee’s reports on the CIA’s attempts to assassinate Fidel Castro and the FBI’s campaign to discredit Martin Luther King Jr.

When the Committee completed its work, Mr. Rhea became an Assistant United States Attorney in Washington, D.C., where he worked for approximately five years prosecuting cases ranging from misdemeanors to first-degree murders to complex white-collar indictments. He served as the office’s Deputy Director of Superior Court Operations, overseeing all felony prosecutions in the District of Columbia, and as the Executive Assistant United States Attorney under U.S. Attorney Charles C. Ruff. In that role, he coordinated local and federal law enforcement agencies, reviewed and authorized major prosecutions, tried high-profile cases, and helped manage the nation’s largest federal prosecutor’s office of over 160 civil and criminal attorneys.

In 1981, Mr. Rhea was appointed Assistant United States Attorney in the U.S. Virgin Islands, where he prosecuted several high-profile murder and economic crime cases. He was already familiar with the Virgin Islands, having received Peace Corps training on St. Croix in the summer of 1968 before serving as a Peace Corps volunteer in Ethiopia for two years.

In 1982, Mr. Rhea and attorney Thomas Alkon founded Alkon and Rhea, a prominent plaintiff’s firm on St. Croix specializing in toxic tort litigation, product liability, and complex white-collar criminal cases. The firm brought critical litigation against the Hess Oil refinery and the Martin Marietta bauxite refinery for toxic exposure to workers, including asbestos, heavy-metal catalysts, silica, solvents, and isocyanate paints. They also prosecuted groundbreaking product liability cases against automobile manufacturers for injuries caused by vehicle instability, firewall failures, and occupant protection failures; handled litigation involving airplane crashes and catastrophic worker-related injuries; and served as co-counsel in litigation against Exxon, ESSO, and Texaco for contaminating the sole-source Tutu aquifer on St. Thomas with petroleum and chlorinated hydrocarbons. Mr. Rhea also represented several businessmen in federal criminal investigations by the Justice Department’s Criminal Tax Division.

In sum, Mr. Rhea has extensive experience in civil, criminal, and appellate litigation, much of it in the Virgin Islands, where he has been a member of the bar for forty years. He has handled multiple high-profile cases in the territory and won the largest civil jury verdict ever rendered in the Virgin Islands in a landmark case involving cancer deaths caused by cigarettes. In 2023, the Virgin Islands Bar Association granted Mr. Rhea its highest honor, the Winston Hodge Award. He also brings extensive experience managing one of the nation’s major legal agencies, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Washington, D.C.

In May 2024, Governor Albert Bryan Jr. nominated Mr. Rhea as the Attorney General of the United States Virgin Islands, and his nomination was confirmed by the Virgin Islands Legislature.