WASHINGTON (AP) - President Bush will nominate the government's chief criminal prosecutor, Michael Chertoff, to a federal appeals court that handles cases for New Jersey, Delaware, Pennsylvania and the Virgin Islands, a lawmaker says.
     
     Chertoff was the U.S. attorney for New Jersey and an attorney in private practice before Bush brought him to Washington as head of the Justice Department's criminal division.
     
     The White House notified Sen. Jon Corzine, D-N.J., on Wednesday that Bush would nominate Chertoff to the U.S. 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals. Corzine ``views it very favorably,'' said his spokesman, David Wald, adding that the senator looks forward to tal king with Chertoff in detail.
     
     The Justice Department declined to comment.
     
     Chertoff has been the administration's top anti-terrorism prosecutor. In a college commencement address in New Jersey last year, Chertoff said the United States had ample evidence that a devastating terrorist attack on U.S. soil was likely long before S ept. 11, 2001.
     
     As federal prosecutor in New Jersey from 1990 to 1994, Chertoff oversaw high-profile prosecutions of Jersey City Mayor Gerald McCann, New York chief judge Sol Wachtler and the kidnappers and killers of Exxon executive Sidney Reso.
     
     Later, as chief Republican counsel to the Senate Whitewater Committee during the administration of President Bill Clinton, Chertoff played a major role in the investigation of the Clintons' Arkansas business dealings; the suicide of Vincent Foster, a Cl inton aide and former law partner of Hillary Clinton; and other allegations against the Clintons.
     
     Most recently, he worked in Trenton as special counsel to the state Senate Judiciary Committee that investigated racial profiling in New Jersey.