The new U.S. attorney for Henderson and the rest of the Western District of Kentucky is thanked by name in the acknowledgements of now-Vice President JD Vance’s “Hillbilly Elegy,” the 2016 memoir that rocketed him onto the national stage.
But don’t refer to Kyle G. Bumgarner as Vance’s editor.
“I just offered moral support, I suppose,” Bumgarner joked in a June interview.
Bumgarner, who worked as a lawyer specializing in civil issues in Bowling Green for about a decade before taking the role of federal prosecutor in June, said he was appointed by President Donald Trump and Attorney General Pam Bondi at the recommendation of Vance.
The pair met while working as clerks in U.S. District Court Judge David Bunning’s office in the early 2010s, he said, and have stayed in touch. In the closing pages of “Hillbilly Elegy,” Vance thanked Bumgarner for “helpful feedback early in the writing process.”
U.S. attorneys are traditionally appointed by the president at the recommendation of a state’s senators. Sen. Mitch McConnell’s office acknowledged a request for comment for this article but did not provide one, while Sen. Rand Paul’s representatives did not reply to emails as to whether he’d weighed in on the nomination.
Neither have publicly mentioned the appointment. In 2017, when now-Kentucky Attorney General Russell Coleman was appointed in Trump’s first term, McConnell issued a statement commending the president for his “outstanding decision.” Coleman had previously worked for McConnell before his nomination and had spent time in the FBI.
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U.S. Attorney Kyle Bumgarner of the Department of Justice’s Western District of Kentucky. July 1, 2025
In a June interview at the U.S. attorney’s office in downtown Louisville, where he discussed his priorities, Bumgarner said he’s “engaged with (McConnell and Paul’s) offices” since taking over on June 3, “and we’re fully committed to all the problems that I’m speaking of. They’re a critical part of the success of this office.”
Carl Tobias, a University of Richmond professor who studies federal appointments, said it isn’t necessarily unusual for a U.S. attorney to be appointed at the recommendation of a vice president, who “usually has the full trust of the president for whom he serves.” Vance and Bumgarner worked together as clerks in “an office that was doing federal work,” he noted, under a judge who has “a really fine reputation outside the district.” (Bunning presided over the Kim Davis controversy in 2015, though Vance and Bumgarner had left the office by then.)
A spokesperson for the vice president did not respond to emails seeking comment.
New federal prosecutor’s previous experience
Bumgarner said problems facing the Western District of Kentucky, which covers 53 counties in the western half of the state, include violent crime, the drug epidemic and exploitation of kids and seniors. As U.S. attorney, the top law enforcement officer in the district, he believes he has the background to take them on.
While he hadn’t previously worked in a federal prosecutor’s office, Bumgarner said he’s “engaged in federal criminal work throughout my career,” including representing indigent defendants as part of the district’s Criminal Justice Act Panel after his time in Bunning’s office.
He built “meaningful working relationships” with federal prosecutors in his new office in that time, he said.
Before the recent appointment, he also spent more than a decade at Bowling Green’s Kerrick Bachert law firm, where attorney and shareholder Shawn Rosso Alcott said he became “one of the finest, most talented lawyers I’ve ever had the privilege of practicing with” as he rose to the rank of partner.
“He quickly got into our caseload at the highest level, handling complex litigation, high-stakes transactional things, advising sophisticated institutional clients,” Alcott told The Courier Journal. “There really wasn’t a thing he wasn’t involved in.”
Bumgarner managed a staff of about 30 people at the law firm in Bowling Green, where his wife Kori Beck Bumgarner serves as the region’s commonwealth’s attorney. As U.S. attorney, he now leads a federal office with about 80 staffers. It’s “certainly a slightly larger staff than I’ve managed before,” he acknowledged, but he said the managerial aspects he picked up as partner at Kerrick Bachert remain “a critical part of this job.”
DOJ U.S. Attorney Kyle Bumgarner of the Western District of Kentucky speaks about federal grand jury returning four indictments and charging 22 defendants with drug trafficking, firearms and money laundering offenses during a press conference Tuesday morning in Louisville, Kentucky. July 1, 2025
Alcott said he played a key role in managing the firm, “which is hard to do because that’s not your full-time job. You’re trying to juggle that along with all your client needs.” And Bumgarner, whose staff bio said he specialized in commercial and employment law, praised staff at the prosecutor’s office who have helped him ease into the role.
Bumgarner has been in the position for just more than a month. On July 1, he hosted his first press conference as U.S. attorney, announcing alongside other law enforcement groups two investigations that led to more than 20 arrests on allegations of drug trafficking and firearm offenses.
But he still has not been confirmed by the Senate, a required step to take on the role permanently (typically, U.S. attorneys serve through a president’s time in office). The chamber’s Judiciary Committee takes feedback from the nominee’s home state senators and offers a recommendation to the full Senate, which then votes to confirm the appointment.
If a vote doesn’t take place within 120 days, an interim U.S. attorney appointment is made by the nominee’s district court until the vacancy is filled. It would be “unusual” for judges in the district to appoint someone other than the president’s nominee as U.S. attorney, Tobias said, “but it happens” — though the judges are likely familiar with Bumgarner through his years as a private lawyer.
For his part, Bumgarner is operating like he’ll be here for the long haul.
“I did not shut down a civil practice in Bowling Green to move here for 120 days,” he said. “I’m settling in as though I’m leading this office through the course of the president’s administration.”
Bumgarner, Vance and ‘Hillbilly Elegy’
Bumgarner spoke highly of Vance. The current vice president worked as a clerk in Bunning’s office with Bumgarner, then as the office’s senior clerk, after graduating from Yale in 2013.
At that time, Bumgarner said, “Hillbilly Elegy” was “just kind of a thought, an idea.” He can remember seeing Vance typing away on a laptop at a mandated legal training course — “I was, like most lawyers, halfway paying attention,” he joked — and learned he had just started to write a book.
“I didn’t know his story,” Bumgarner said. “I had worked with him for several months. I did not know his story until I read the first few chapters of the book. I don’t know that I offered him any criticism. I certainly offered him my support really to tell his story, because it’s such a remarkable story. It’s great commentary.”
Vice President JD Vance with his son and his wife, Usha Vance, at a parade in Washington, D.C., in June. Vance is a friend of new U.S. Attorney Kyle Bumgarner though their time working as clerks for a federal judge several years ago.
The book vaulted Vance to stardom after Trump was first elected in 2016, as it was viewed as an explanation for the president’s popularity in places like Appalachian Kentucky. He would go on to be elected to an Ohio U.S. Senate seat in 2022 and earn a place on Trump’s ticket as vice president two years later.
Bumgarner was in the nation’s capital in January to watch his friend’s inauguration.
“It was such an honor to be a part of that, to witness it,” Bumgarner said. “That’s at the core of our democracy, so having the opportunity to watch that, and that peaceful transition of power, it was just a remarkable, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”
Reach Lucas Aulbach at laulbach@courier-journal.com.
This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: JD Vance helped new US attorney for Western Kentucky land role