Kirk Torgensen
Chief Deputy Utah Attorney General
Kirk Torgensen was appointed Chief Deputy Attorney General in January of 2001 and oversees the criminal divisions, plus child protection, child support and commercial enforcement divisions, for the Utah Attorney General’s Office. In that role, Torgensen has focused on stopping white collar crime in Utah. He organized several statewide summits involving hundreds of law enforcement officers, business and financial institution leaders. He also oversaw the creation of IRIS---Identity Theft Reporting Information System—the nation’s first website that allows victims to send identity theft complaints directly to the proper law enforcement agency and get a checklist of things to do to resolve credit problems.
Torgensen has also been highly involved in setting up management training courses for the Attorney General’s Office to help provide better mentoring and supervision for attorneys and staff. For those efforts he was given the Nelson Kempsky Award by the Conference of Western Attorneys General as Outstanding Leader and Manager of the Year for 2005-06. He was also named one of Utah’s top lawyers in 2009 by his peers and received by the Outstanding Contributor to Law Enforcement Award from the Utah Police Chief’s Association.
After graduating from the University of Utah Law School in 1986, Torgensen joined the United States Air Force and served as a Judge Advocate in Germany. His work primarily involved criminal prosecution and criminal defense work, including more than 40 jury trials throughout Europe. After leaving the Air Force in 1990, Torgensen began working at the Utah State Attorney General ’s Office in the Criminal Appeals Division where he was promoted to Section Chief over the Civil Rights section. During that time he worked with another Assistant Attorney General named Mark Shurtleff. He also supervised the state’s first money laundering and racketeering unit and tried two death penalty cases resulting in convictions.
In 1998, Torgensen was appointed by Governor Michael O. Leavitt to be the Director of the Adult Probation and Parole, where he was oversaw more than 500 employees, a 35 million dollar budget and provided supervision for more than 15,000 offenders.
For more than 16 years Torgensen has been an instructor for Police Officer Standards and Training, Utah Narcotics Officers Association and Utah Prosecution Council. He is also an adjunct professor for both Weber State University and the University of Utah, teaching Constitutional Law and Criminal Justice classes.