Lawyer Gavin Holihan appointed Lehigh County’s first assistant district attorney – The Morning Call

A well-known lawyer is returning to the Lehigh County District Attorney’s Office after years in private practice.

Gavin P. Holihan will take over Jan. 9 as first assistant district attorney. He was an assistant district attorney from 1992 to 1997.

In a statement, District Attorney Jim Martin said Holihan “has all of the qualities necessary and desirable to fulfill the responsibilities of this important position.”

The position “is the most important attorney position in the office,” Martin said. “The First Assistant acts as and for the District Attorney when he is out of the jurisdiction, or otherwise unavailable. And, he would succeed the District Attorney in the event of a vacancy in the office.”

The position was previously held by Jeffrey S. Dimmig, who has returned to his duties as a Chief Deputy District Attorney.

Holihan is a 1988 graduate of Franklin and Marshall College and a 1991 graduate of Fordham University School of Law in New York.

After his earlier stint in the district attorney’s office, he worked as the county’s deputy solicitor and with the firm of Huber and Waldron. He started his own practice in 2004. He has served as a part-time trial attorney with the Lehigh County’s Office of the Public Defender since 2015.

His many cases have included six capital homicide trials in four counties. In one high-profile case, he represented former South Whitehall police officer Jonathan Roselle, who was acquitted of involuntary manslaughter in the fatal shooting of Joseph Santos outside Dorney Park in 2018.