Alina Habba, once a courtroom defender of Donald Trump and later his hand-picked choice to run the federal prosecutor’s office in New Jersey, has bowed out after a federal appeals court declared her appointment improper. Her exit closes months of institutional limbo and sharp political friction—though she insists she’s not retreating.
Habba announced her decision on X, framing it as an act meant to steady an office rattled by legal turbulence. Yet she left a warning flare in her message: stepping down, she suggested, did not mean stepping back.
Instead of disappearing from the scene, she’s shifting inward—taking up a senior advisory role to Attorney General Pam Bondi, where she’ll be involved in overseeing U.S. Attorney operations nationwide. Meanwhile, the Justice Department has spread the New Jersey leadership duties across three lawyers as a temporary fix.
Her departure stems from a ruling by a three-judge panel of the Third Circuit, which concluded that the administration bypassed federal appointment rules by keeping her in charge after her 120-day interim period lapsed without Senate confirmation. The judges held that once New Jersey’s federal trial court refused to extend her interim term, the administration couldn’t simply sidestep the statute.
Bondi, undeterred, said the Justice Department plans to push for further review and would reinstall Habba if higher courts overturn the decision. That path could run either to the Supreme Court or a rehearing before the full Third Circuit.
The ruling is the latest collision between the administration and the judiciary over attempts to position Trump-aligned figures atop U.S. Attorney offices without the usual confirmation hurdles. Habba and Bondi both rebuked New Jersey judges for halting criminal cases under her supervision after she was disqualified. Habba pointed to what she described as falling violent-crime numbers in major cities and accused the courts of drifting into political weaponry.
Federal law is explicit: if the Senate doesn’t confirm an interim U.S. Attorney within 120 days, the district court—not the executive—gets to choose a temporary replacement. In Habba’s case, that provision became decisive.
The appellate panel that issued the ruling drew from both Republican and Democratic appointments, underscoring that the issue turned not on ideology, but on statutory limits that the court said could not be bent.
