Lindsey Halligan out as U.S. attorney following pressure from judges
She is the third Trump-appointed U.S. attorney pick to leave their post in the face of a growing body of court rulings that have deemed their appointments illegal.
Lindsey Halligan, a Trump administration lawyer who was named head of a key U.S. attorney’s office in Virginia last year with instructions to seek criminal charges against President Donald Trump’s perceived political adversaries, left her post at the Justice Department on Tuesday.
Halligan’s departure followed a pair of extraordinary moves by two federal judges who issued court orders hours earlier saying they intended to replace Halligan at the helm of the U.S. attorney’s office for the Eastern District of Virginia and threatening disciplinary sanctions for any government lawyer who continued to refer to her as U.S. attorney in legal filings.
The separate actions by Chief Judge M. Hannah Lauck and Judge David J. Novak, who were nominated by President Barack Obama and Trump, respectively, signaled a breaking point for the federal bench in the Eastern District of Virginia months after Halligan was disqualified from serving as U.S. attorney in the high-profile office.
The orders intensified a battle playing out nationwide between the executive and judicial branches over how the nation’s 93 U.S. attorneys can be appointed for temporary terms without Senate confirmation. And they had posed obstacles for Halligan — who had no prosecutorial experience before she was installed in the job — as she attempted to carry out Trump’s directions to levy criminal charges against two of his perceived political foes: former FBI director James B. Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James.
Halligan, in a statement, accused the district’s federal judges of a campaign to pressure her to leave after the court ruling declaring her appointment was invalid. She said that effort had diverted “time and resources from public safety responsibilities.”
It was unclear Tuesday night who would be in charge of the U.S. attorney’s office. The Justice Department this month dismissed the first assistant U.S. attorney, Robert K. McBride, who would have automatically assumed the top job under federal law. A Justice Department spokesperson did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Halligan is the third Trump-appointed U.S. attorney pick to leave their post in the face of a growing body of court rulings that have deemed their appointments illegal.
Alina Habba, a former Trump lawyer he picked to lead the U.S. attorney’s office in New Jersey, resigned last month after a monthslong legal battle over whether she was lawfully serving in that role.
While the Justice Department continues to appeal the decision, Habba stepped down and moved to another role in the Justice Department.
Julianne Murray, another contested pick, resigned her post as U.S. attorney in Delaware days afterward. Before her appointment, she had served as the state’s Republican Party chairwoman.
Attorney General Pam Bondi praised Halligan for her service in a statement Tuesday.
“While we will feel her absence keenly, we are confident that she will continue to serve her country in other ways,” Bondi said. “The circumstances that led to this outcome are deeply misguided. We are living in a time when a democratically elected President’s ability to staff key law enforcement positions faces serious obstacles.”
Several judges had suggested for weeks that Halligan should resign and sharply questioned her continued use of the U.S. attorney title after an out-of-district judge, Cameron McGowan Currie, ruled in late November that the Trump administration had used an unlawful maneuver to install Halligan.
On Tuesday, Lauck directed the court’s clerk to publish the U.S. attorney job posting in local newspapers, asking anyone interested to apply by Feb. 10. “The position of United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia is vacant,” reads a public notice posted on the court’s website Tuesday.
Lauck’s order marked an escalation, signaling active efforts by the judges to appoint the district’s top federal prosecutor under a federal law that gives them the power to do so after an interim U.S. attorney has been in office for 120 days. It was followed hours later with another order from Novak, who raised the threat of disciplinary action for anyone who described Halligan as the U.S. attorney in legal filings.
“No matter all of her machinations, Ms. Halligan has no legal basis to represent to this Court that she holds the position. And any such representation going forward can only be described as a false statement made in direct defiance of valid court orders,” Novak wrote. “In short, this charade of Ms. Halligan masquerading as the United States Attorney for this District in direct defiance of binding court orders must come to an end.”
The Trump administration has appealed Currie’s ruling, but it never requested a stay, so the ruling disqualifying Halligan remained in effect. Nonetheless, she continued to represent herself as the U.S. attorney in court filings.
This month, Novak ordered Halligan to explain why she continued to use the title, suggesting she may be making false or misleading statements. The Justice Department responded defiantly to that order last week, arguing that Currie’s ruling was not binding and that Novak had no authority to strike Halligan’s name from the signature block of Justice Department court filings.
The response, which accused Novak of making “rudimentary” legal errors and missing “elementary” legal principles, was written in a derisive tone unusual for a government lawyer addressing a federal judge.
Novak said in response that Halligan’s rhetoric was beneath the court’s dignity and more suitable for cable news. He said Halligan’s continued use of the U.S. attorney title after Currie’s ruling was an affront to the legal system.
“The Court cannot tolerate such obstinance, because doing so would undermine the very essence of the Rule of Law,” he wrote in Tuesday’s order. “If the Court were to allow Ms. Halligan and the Department of Justice to pick and choose which orders that they will follow, the same would have to be true for other litigants and our system of justice would crumble.”
Halligan’s nomination for a full term as U.S. attorney is pending in the Senate, and it was unclear Tuesday whether the White House also intended to withdraw it. Even if they don’t, the nomination is unlikely to move forward because it lacks support from Virginia’s two senators — Mark R. Warner and Tim Kaine, both Democrats — who have emphasized that the Eastern District of Virginia handles a complex portfolio of cases dealing with national security, leaks of classified information, and international terrorism.
In disqualifying Halligan last fall, Currie ruled that Halligan was never legally appointed to the position of interim U.S. attorney because the Trump administration had already named someone to that role — Halligan’s predecessor, Erik S. Siebert, who served a full 120-day term, from January to May 2025. The district judges then unanimously extended Siebert in the role at the Justice Department’s request, Novak wrote in his order.
But Siebert was forced out in September after declining to seek charges against Comey and James. Career prosecutors had recommended against pursuing the two cases because of insufficient evidence of wrongdoing. Trump then named Halligan, who promptly secured indictments against Comey, on allegations that he made false statements to Congress, and James, who was accused of mortgage fraud. Currie tossed both indictments after finding that Halligan was unlawfully appointed.
Halligan’s 120-day appointment concluded Tuesday.
Justice Department lawyers maintain that the statute allows for back-to-back interim appointments. But in addition to Currie, at least five other federal judges have rejected that argument while ruling on challenges to other Trump U.S. attorney appointees. In each case, the judges have said that if the attorney general could legally name a string of interim appointees, there would be no need for an administration to put a nominee up for a Senate vote.
Judges across the country have been cautious in exercising their authority to name replacements for the president’s picks. When New Jersey’s federal judges named a veteran federal prosecutor to replace Habba last summer, the Justice Department fired their pick within hours and undertook a series of legal maneuvers aimed at keeping Habba in the role.
Delaware’s chief federal judge began soliciting applications this fall to replace Murray in Delaware. But Murray resigned her post in December before a potential standoff with the administration could come to a head.
Judges in other districts have refused to reappoint Trump’s interim U.S. attorney picks but declined to choose replacements. The chief federal judge in Seattle issued an order last week soliciting applications to potentially appoint a new acting U.S. attorney there, when the interim appointment of Trump’s current pick expires next month.