DOJ is hiring for court battles as Trump slashes other agencies
President Donald Trump speaks before Pam Bondi is sworn in as attorney general on Feb. 5. (Photo by Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
The Justice Department is recruiting new attorneys to help defend President Donald Trump’s immigration and other policies in court, according to public job postings, department officials and legal experts.
The aim is to create a cadre of lawyers with the skills and willingness to back the administration as it gears up for legal challenges on birthright citizenship, sending migrants to Guantánamo Bay, federal workforce firings, deep spending cuts and more.
The hirings are largely to fill openings created by the high number of civil division attorneys who have resigned since the 2024 presidential election, according to people familiar with the situation, who like others interviewed for this article spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid reprisals and to discuss sensitive information.
But the effort also gives the Justice Department an opportunity to bring a slew of attorneys who align ideologically with the president into career positions in high-profile sections of the department.
Multiple job postings say the Justice Department is seeking “many” attorneys to work in its Federal Programs Branch and the Office of Immigration Litigation. Both departments are in the Justice Department’s civil division, and their attorneys would be at the forefront of deportation fights and defending the most controversial executive branch policies, including the refugee ban, terminations of government workers and the slashing of government agencies.
The attorneys would work under senior political appointees being hired to the Justice Department, many of whom are attorneys from conservative law firms and Republican state governments.
“President Trump’s immigration enforcement agenda is a top national security priority that this Department of Justice is prepared to vigorously defend whenever challenged in court,” a spokesperson for the department said in a statement.
The Justice Department is also planning to temporarily assign people to the civil divisions from other offices to defend Trump administration policies, according to a public listing on LinkedIn. At least some of those detailees could come from the civil rights division—an area of the Justice Department that is expected to have dwindling workload demands during the Trump administration.
And attorneys in departments that do not typically deal with immigration enforcement are being asked to handle some immigration matters, the people familiar with the situation said.
The job listings, coupled with interviews with current and former Justice Department officials, suggest that the Trump administration is preparing for extensive and prolonged legal battles in court, with the department seeking both trial attorneys and those who specialize in the appeals process.
Already, the Trump administration is facing more than 80 lawsuits over its efforts to dramatically reshape the federal government and national policies. Several initiatives have been temporarily blocked by lower-court judges, and so far two have reached the Supreme Court.
While many federal agencies are slashing probationary employees and laying off workers en masse, the Justice Department workforce has largely remained intact since Trump took office.
His administration has pushed out or transferred top career officials who held powerful jobs in agency, creating uncertainty and mistrust among the career workforce by according to people familiar. But it has not fired or laid off large swaths of rank and file attorneys or staff.
Still, there has been high staff turnover in key divisions, creating an opportunity for the Trump administration to hire more career attorneys who strongly support its legal positions and approach.
In some government agencies, the federal hiring freeze mandated by the Trump White House has meant that they cannot replace people who quit. At Justice—with many jobs focused on Trump’s priorities of boosting deportations and combating violent crime—the hirings have continued.
Around a third of the 130 attorneys in the Federal Programs Branch have quit the Justice Department since Election Day, according to multiple people familiar with the matter. More resignations are expected as the workload and demands pile up, these people said.
While federal law would prohibit Justice Department officials from asking about the political ideologies during the hiring process of career employees, legal experts said that the federal programs branch is always entwined with White House policies. In the Biden administration, for example, attorneys in this division defended the president’s student loan forgiveness plans, covid mandates, challenges to firearm regulations and more.
People who are strongly against Trump administration policies would be unlikely to apply for a job that would put them at the forefront of defending those policies, people familiar with how the branch works said.
In general, the office is filled with career staffers, a group of whom may disagree with any given administration, the people said. Career staffers and political appointees are supposed to work together to find strong strategies for defending presidential policies that meet legal muster—a process that often entails disagreements and workshopping legal arguments.
But some attorneys are frustrated because they are being asked simply to defend Trump’s policies, with little room for discussion or dissent, according to a former civil division employee who is familiar with the branch’s current dynamics.
The Office of Immigration Litigation is a division of more than 300 attorneys who typically handle the process of stripping citizenship from immigrants who commit crimes or have used fraud on their naturalization applications. These attorneys also defend the government when there is an appeal of a decision made in the administrative immigration courts.
An attorney from the Office of Immigration Litigation was also listed on the Trump administration’s civil lawsuits against the state of Illinois and the city of Chicago, which seek to block state and local protections for undocumented immigrants. Involvement in cases like this is unusual for the Office of Immigration Litigation, people familiar with the office said.
The Trump administration has also created a division focused on fighting what are known as “sanctuary cities,” which are typically Democratic cities with a policy of protecting immigrants who are in the country illegally and not cooperating with federal authorities to deport them.
Justice Department officials have transferred veteran career officials from other divisions—many of whom have little background in immigration law—to this office, giving them the option of quitting if they do not want to work there.
The office is reporting to the deputy attorney general. Officials say it is up and running, though it is unclear what litigation the office is working on.
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