Exclusive to Fox News: Brown University has enlisted the expertise of former U.S. Attorney Zachary Cunha, who resigned from his position in May, to brace for potential legal actions following the tragic shooting death of two students on its campus earlier this month, according to information provided to Fox News.

The prestigious Ivy League institution has announced that it has engaged Cunha, the former U.S. Attorney for Rhode Island, to facilitate communication and coordination with law enforcement agencies.

“Brown University routinely collaborates with external legal experts whose skills enhance those of our Office of the General Counsel,” the university stated. “In this instance, we have retained Zachary Cunha, the former United States Attorney for the District of Rhode Island, to support the University in working with federal, state, and local law enforcement authorities.”

In response to the deadly campus shooting that claimed the lives of students Ella Cook and Mukhammad Aziz Umurzokov, Brown University has faced mounting scrutiny. The incident occurred on December 13 within an academic building on campus.

Brown has come under criticism over the Dec. 13 shooting, which took the lives of Ella Cook and Mukhammad Aziz Umurzokov inside a campus academic building. 

The suspected gunman, Claudio Manuel Neves Valente, 48, a Portuguese national who studied at Brown from the fall of 2000 to the spring of 2001 to study physics, was found dead last week. 

The university came under heavy criticism over the lack of security cameras on campus as investigators spent days canvassing the neighborhood outside the campus for surveillance video, amid a manhunt. 

Visitors pause at a makeshift memorial for the victims of Saturday’s shooting, at the Van Wickle Gate at Brown University, Monday, Dec. 15, 2025, in Providence, Rhode Island. (Robert F. Bukaty/AP Photo)

A motive for the killings remains unclear. 

Cunha was nominated to serve as the U.S. attorney for Rhode Island in 2021 by former President Joe Biden. He resigned in February after receiving notification from the White House that President Donald Trump had directed him to do so, the Justice Department said at the time. 

Cunha is a partner at Nixon Peabody, a law firm with offices across the globe, where he serves in the firm’s litigation department and government investigations and white-collar defense practice group, according to its website. 

As federal prosecutors, Cunha’s office worked cases related to the opioid pandemic, fraud and other crimes, the Justice Department said. 

A bouquet of flowers rests on snow, Sunday, Dec. 14, 2025, on the campus of Brown University not far from where a shooting took place, in Providence. (Steven Senne/AP Photo)

Fox News Digital has reached out to Cunha.