Front Office

Joseph T. McNally, First Assistant United States Attorney

Joseph T. McNally is the First Assistant United States Attorney for the Central District of California, the largest U.S. Attorney’s Office outside of D.C., serving seven counties and nearly 20 million people.

Mr. McNally has served as an Assistant United States Attorney for over 15 years. Since joining the Office, Mr. McNally has prosecuted some of the most significant federal criminal cases in the US Attorney's Office ranging from fraud to violent and organized crime matters. Some of Mr. McNally's case work includes the ongoing Pacific Hospital investigation that has resulted in the convictions of 20 doctors and health care executives for their participation in a $50 million bribe and kickback scheme; trial convictions of a federal law enforcement officer and his wife for money laundering and narcotics trafficking; the conviction of a senior leader of the Mexican Mafia for racketeering following a multi-month trial; convictions of members of an international money laundering organization for laundering $60 million through Los Angeles-based jewelry businesses; and convictions of an Orange County lawyer and business partners for defrauding hundreds of homeowners out of millions of dollars in a loan modification telemarketing scheme. In 2016, Mr. McNally received the U.S. Department of Justice’s prestigious Director’s Award for Superior Performance for his work convicting a Eurasian organized crime leader and others who were convicted at trial for operating a multi-million dollar bank fraud and identity theft scheme from state prison. Mr. McNally has tried 14 cases and argued before the Ninth Circuit a half dozen times.

Prior to serving as First Assistant United States Attorney, Mr. McNally served as Deputy Chief in the Violent and Organized Crime Section and the Orange County Office. In 2020, Mr. McNally served at the Department of Justice as Senior Counsel to the Assistant Attorney General for Legal Policy where he advised senior DOJ leadership on criminal law policy. Mr. McNally has served as faculty member at the Department's National Advocacy Center where he has trained other prosecutors. Before joining the United States Attorney's Office, Mr. McNally clerked for the Honorable D. Lowell Jensen, United States District Judge, in the Northern District of California. Mr. McNally obtained his B.S. from Santa Clara University and his law degree from UC Berkeley.

Christina T. Shay, Executive Assistant United States Attorney

Christina T. Shay is the Executive Assistant United States Attorney. She oversees Operations, Human Resources, Fiscal, and Staff across all three offices for the approximately 600 employees in the United States Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California.

Ms. Shay started in the office in 2011. She has previously served as the Chief Assistant United States Attorney. Prior to joining the Front Office, Ms. Shay was the Deputy Chief of the Criminal Division and the head of Complaints as a Deputy Chief in the General Crimes Section. From 2012 to 2016, she was a member of the Violent and Organized Crimes Section where she investigated and tried child exploitation, drug, fraud, and violent crime cases. Ms. Shay received her A.B. from Harvard College and her J.D. from NYU School of Law. Following law school, she clerked for the Honorable James Ware in the Northern District of California and for the Honorable Milan D. Smith on the Ninth Circuit. Before joining the United States Attorney’s Office, Ms. Shay was an associate at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen, & Katz in New York.

Kathy Yu, Chief of Ethics and Post-Conviction Review

Kathy Yu joined the Office in February 2016 and currently serves as Senior Litigation Counsel.  Since becoming an Assistant United States Attorney, Ms. Yu has prosecuted some of the Office’s most significant violent crime cases.  She has tried eleven cases to verdict.  Her case work includes the prosecution of a 51-defendant RICO case involving gang murders, assaults, extortion, drug trafficking, and money laundering.  During three trials that resulted from this prosecution, Ms. Yu obtained convictions against a Mexican Mafia member and five other gang members, which were subsequently affirmed on appeal.  Most recently, Ms. Yu was part of the team that charged and obtained guilty pleas from four Florencia 13 gang members and associates for murdering an LAPD officer as he shopped for a home with his girlfriend.  Ms. Yu also has extensive experience prosecuting child exploitation cases, having obtained life sentences against a predator who targeted dozens of children in the Philippines and a human trafficker who recruited and exploited children from foster homes. 

In 2020, Ms. Yu received the Los Angeles County Bar Association Prosecutor of the Year Award.  She serves on the Office’s Community Outreach and Service Committee.  Ms. Yu received her B.A., summa cum laude, from the University of California, San Diego, and her law degree from the University of California, Berkeley School of Law (Order of the Coif).