Patrick Fitzgerald, a former U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, is coming to the Northwestern School of Law next week to speak on “The Perils of Prosecutors Facing Ticking Time Bombs.”

Fitzgerald, the longest-serving U.S. attorney in Chicago, will speak on Tuesday, Feb. 26, at the Chicago campus as the featured speaker of the School of Law’s annual Pope & John Lecture Series on Professionalism.

During his 2001 to 2012 tenure, Fitzgerald led the prosecutions on the corruption charges of Illinois Governors George Ryan and Rod Blagojevich and worked on the case against Scooter Libby, a high-ranking White House official who leaked CIA information to the media.

Previously, Fitzgerald served as assistant U.S. attorney in the southern district of New York, where he worked on the trial against Omar Abdel Rahman, who was involved in the 1993 World Trade Center bombings.

He was also involved in the United States v. Usama bin Laden, et al. trial. Fitzgerald helped convict all defendants for their involvement in the 1998 U.S. bombings in Kenya and Tanzania and conspiracy to murder U.S. citizens living abroad.

Pope & John Ltd. established the lecture series in 1991 to promote discussion of the professional responsibility of lawyers.

Past speakers have included Lisa Madigan, Illinois attorney general; Judge Alexander Sanders, former chief judge of the South Carolina Court of Appeals; and Charles T. Wells, former chief justice of the Florida Supreme Court.

— Ally Mutnick