I'm glad I made the decision, although the practice of law - and particularly serving as a federal judge - was a part of my life that I really enjoyed and treasured and look back on it with fondness.

When I went to college, my goal was to be a college history teacher. I majored in history.

My father was the orphaned son of immigrants to the United States from Ireland. My father never knew his parents. His mother died - we're not sure - either at or shortly after his birth, and he and all of his siblings were placed in orphanages in the Boston area.

I was the United States Attorney for Maine for three years, and then was appointed a federal judge.

So my father grew up in an orphanage in Boston. He was then adopted by an elderly childless couple from Maine, who gave him the name of Mitchell. He moved to Maine, and there he met my mother and was married.

I had been involved in U.S. intelligence in Berlin, Germany, while in the military and had worked with a contact with the Central Intelligence Agency office there.

And I spent that time working as an insurance adjuster and going to law school in the evening, and then when I left law school, I joined the Department of Justice in Washington.