Benjamin Richard Civiletti (born July 17, 1935) served as the United States Attorney General during the last year and a half of the Carter administration, from 1979 to 1981. He was the first Italian American to serve as Attorney General. He is a former senior partner in the Washington, D.C., law firm of Venable LLP, where he specialized in commercial litigation and internal investigations, and in 2005 became the first U.S.