Dana James Boente ( Bent-Ë) (born February 7, 1954) is an American attorney who served as General Counsel of the FBI from January 2018 to 2020, United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia from September 2013 to January 2018, and as the Acting United States Attorney General from January to February 2017. He also served as acting assistant attorney general for the National Security Division of the United States Department of Justice. On October 27, 2017, Boente announced he would resign from the Department of Justice after a successor is in place. On January 23, 2018, Boente was named general counsel to the FBI by the director Christopher A. Wray, filling the vacancy after James Baker's reassignment to another part of the bureau. Early life and education Boente was born in Carlinville, Illinois in 1954 to James and Doris Boente. Boente received a Bachelor of Science degree in business administration in 1976 from Saint Louis University and his Master of Business Administration in 1977. He then attended the Saint Louis University School of Law, receiving his Juris Doctor in 1982. Career In 1982, Boente began his career as a law clerk for Chief U.S. District Judge J. Waldo Ackerman for the Central District of Illinois. In 1984, he joined the Tax Division's Criminal Section as part of the Attorney General's Honors Program. Boente became an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Fraud Unit of the Eastern District of Virginia in 2001. In December 2012, Boente was appointed by President Barack Obama to serve as the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, a position he held until September 2013. He became the Acting U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia by virtue of the Vacancy Reform Act on September 23, 2013, and served in that position until December 15, 2015. In this role, he was involved in the sentencing of former Virginia governor Bob McDonnell and his wife Maureen. He stated that, "No one is above the law... not a high public official, not even the highest public official [in Virginia]." McDonnell's conviction was unanimously overturned by the United States Supreme Court on June 27, 2016, with Chief Justice John Roberts declaring that McDonnell's actions as governor were "tawdry", but agreed that instructions to the jury in his case about what constitutes "official acts" were so broad, they could cover almost any action a public official takes.