Ponteen Steps In as AG Walker Steps Down

Joseph Ponteen at a 2017 Senate hearing. (V.I. Legislature photo by Barry Leerdam)
Joseph Ponteen at a 2017 Senate hearing. (V.I. Legislature photo by Barry Leerdam)

Attorney General Claude Walker resigned the post of attorney general in the U.S. Virgin Islands, effective Dec. 8. Traditionally, with a new administration coming in January, Walker was likely to depart in a few weeks regardless, as the incoming governor staffs his own cabinet.

Gov. Kenneth Mapp appointed Deputy Attorney General Joseph Ponteen to serve as acting attorney general pending the next administration’s permanent replacement.

Walker came on board as Mapp’s fourth attorney general in August 2015. He previously had been a prosecutor with the V.I. Attorney General’s Office, from 2007 until 2011, when he left to take the position of senior legal counsel for ScotiaBank USVI.

Beginning in 2014 Walker was associate regional counsel for litigation at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. He also worked in the nation’s capital as an environmental attorney at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and as a policy advisor at the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence. He holds a law degree from Albany Law School.