Loretta Lynch is sworn in as U.S. attorney general

WASHINGTON — Describing her career as a federal prosecutor the "honor of my life,'' Loretta Lynch was sworn in Monday as the 83rd attorney general of the United States and the first African American woman to hold the office.

Vice President Biden administered the oath of office to Lynch, as her father, brother and husband looked on in the attorney general's ornate conference room at the Justice Department.

"It's been quite a process,'' Lynch said, referring to a long-delayed Senate confirmation, which had prompted a wave of criticism from Democrats and some Republicans.

The confirmation had been held up because of a month-long impasse in the Senate over legislation aimed at curbing human trafficking.

"It's about time,'' Biden said. "It's about time this woman is being sworn in.''

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Lynch succeeds Eric Holder, whose six-year tenure at the department was marked in part by a contentious relationship with Congress.

Biden lauded Holder, saying the outgoing attorney general "stood his ground and never yielded.''

He said Lynch was "cut from the exact same cloth.''

"If there is anything you need to know about Loretta Lynch, it's that she has excelled at everything she has done,'' Biden said.

Lynch becomes the nation's chief law enforcement officer as tensions between police and minority communities across the nation continue to simmer. Lynch was taking the oath as mourners gathered at a Baptist church in Baltimore for the funeral of Freddie Gray whose death earlier this month while in police custody has touched off protests, some of the turning violent. By Monday evening, some of those violent confrontations resulted in the injury of seven police officers.

The Justice Department is in the midst of a separate review of Gray's death.

Though she did not specifically address the Gray case in remarks following her swearing in, the new attorney general made reference to the strained "trust'' between law enforcement and the communities they police.

"We can imbue our criminal justice system with both strength and fairness, for the protection of both the needs of victims and rights of all,'' she said. " We can restore trust and faith both in our laws and in those of us who enforce them.''

Later Monday, during her first visit to the White House as attorney general, she briefed President Obama on the events unfolding in Baltimore where protesters had looted some stores and destroyed police patrol cars.

Throughout the day, Baltimore appeared to cast a larger shadow on Lynch's first day in office where earlier she made reference to an unlikely personal journey that started in Greensboro, N.C., the daughter of a Baptist minister and school librarian and has taken her to the Justice Department's fifth-floor office suite. A portrait of former attorney general Robert F. Kennedy hung just above her left shoulder at the lectern.

"We are all just here for a time — whether in this building or even on this earth,'' Lynch said. "But the values we hold dear will live on long after we have left this stage. Our responsibility, while we are here, is to breathe life into them; to imbue them with the strength of our convictions and the weight of our efforts.

"I know this can be done,'' she said. "Because I am here to tell you, if a little girl from North Carolina who used to tell her grandfather in the fields to lift her up on the back of his mule, so she could see 'way up high, granddaddy,' can become the chief law enforcement officer of the United States of America, then we can do anything."