The U.S. Attorneys

The Judiciary Act of 1789 created the office in a single clause, directing that a person learned in the law be appointed in each district to prosecute crimes and represent the United States in civil suits. For eighty years these district attorneys answered to no one in particular, taking direction from the Treasury, the State Department, or the courts as cases required. The creation of the Justice Department in 1870 put them under the Attorney General, and the Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys, established in 1953, gave Washington the means to coordinate what remains a deliberately decentralized system.

There are ninety-three U.S. Attorneys for the ninety-four judicial districts, since Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands share one. Each is nominated by the President, confirmed by the Senate, and appointed for a four-year term, though in practice they serve at the President's pleasure and most resign when a new administration arrives. Beneath them about six thousand Assistant U.S. Attorneys, career lawyers who stay across administrations, do the daily work: presenting cases to grand juries, trying federal crimes from drug trafficking to fraud, defending federal agencies when they are sued, and collecting debts owed to the government.

The U.S. Attorney is the most powerful federal official most Americans have never heard of. Within a district, the office decides which cases to bring, which to decline, and what sentences to seek, and it does so with wide discretion. Main Justice sets priorities and must approve certain cases, such as those touching national security or public corruption, but the overwhelming majority of federal prosecutions are initiated and tried locally. The Southern District of New York, with its Wall Street jurisdiction, and the District of Columbia, which also handles local felonies, carry outsized influence.

Because U.S. Attorneys are political appointees who wield prosecutorial power, their independence is a recurring controversy. The 2006 dismissal of several U.S. Attorneys over what critics called political motives ended an Attorney General's tenure. In 2025 the use of interim and acting appointments to install U.S. Attorneys without Senate confirmation, the resignation of career prosecutors over dismissed cases, and court rulings on the legality of some appointments renewed the question of how far the White House may reach into the ninety-three offices.