Alina Habba ‘unlawfully’ Working As Us Attorney In New Jersey, Judge Rules

A federal judge rejected President Donald Trump’s use of a loophole to keep Alina Habba in place as New Jersey’s top federal prosecutor.

In a 77-page ruling, U.S. District Judge Matthew Brann said Thursday that Habba “is not lawfully holding the office of United States Attorney” and has been in the position without legal authority since July 1.

As a result, Habba, who had previously worked as Trump’s personal attorney, cannot run the office the president attempted to keep her in charge of after her 120-day interim appointment expired. The Trump administration employed a series of maneuvers to try to retain Habba’s control of the office after district judges ousted her in July.

“Faced with the question of whether Ms. Habba is lawfully performing the functions and duties of the office of the United States Attorney for the District of New Jersey, I conclude that she is not,” Brann wrote.

Brann put his ruling on hold, pending the Trump administration’s possible appeal, but the fallout could be a staggering mess across the executive branch. Brann said Habba’s actions in New Jersey for the past seven weeks “may be declared void” and Habba must be disqualified from participating in any of the office’s cases as its leader. The office handles thousands of criminal and civil cases at any given time.

The ruling by Brann — a Republican and Obama appointee who sits in Pennsylvania’s Middle District — could also have wider implications for other U.S. attorney’s offices in Los Angeles, Nevada, New Mexico and upstate New York, where the administration has effectively sidestepped or overridden both the Senate confirmation and judicial appointment processes for selecting U.S. attorneys.

Spokespeople for Habba and the Justice Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Brann’s ruling came in response to legal challenges to Habba’s authority by defense attorneys trying to get charges against their clients thrown out by arguing the Trump administration illegally kept her on and without being confirmed by the Senate.

Those challenges came amid days of confusion over who is leading the office because of complex and contested rules over filling vacancies when there isn’t a Senate-confirmed leader.

The judge declined to throw out the charges against the defendants, Julien Giraud and Cesar Pina, but said anyone who prosecutes them “under the supervision or authority of Ms. Habba” would be subject to disqualification.

Brann’s formal order only applies to the defendants in the case before him, but his opinion is written to broadly apply to everything Habba does.

“I think it would be deeply irresponsible for the department to move forward with Alina Habba as the highest Justice Department official signing indictments or other pleadings,” said James Pearce, an attorney who represents the Criminal Defense Lawyers of New Jersey in the case.

Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, the No. 2 official at the Justice Department, has started putting his name on some of the New Jersey office’s work in recent days, an unusual move that appears designed to head off challenges to the authority of those prosecutions if they were signed by Habba alone.

Brann’s ruling also has implications for other agencies, said Anne Joseph O’Connell, a Stanford Law School professor who studies the appointments process. She said modern agencies run on the delegation of authority in the face of a broken Senate confirmation process and that some of the particulars in Brann’s ruling would affect other administration officials, like the current head of FEMA.

“If upheld on appeal, this ruling would upend common practice of acting officials under Democratic and Republican Administrations,” Joseph O’Connell said.

It is unclear from the ruling who should be in charge of the New Jersey U.S. Attorney’s Office.

In late July — acting under the assumption that Habba’s interim appointment expired on or about July 22 — the district court judges in New Jersey exercised a 160-year-old power to select a temporary prosecutor to lead the office.

They picked Desiree Leigh Grace, a respected Republican career prosecutor who was then quickly fired by the Trump administration. Grace has since filed a grievance that said her termination was “completely unjustified and was in direct retaliation for the District Court appointing me as U.S. Attorney.”

At the time, Trump officials, including Blanche and Attorney General Pam Bondi, accused federal judges of overstepping their authority, an argument Brann rejected.

Instead, Brann found Trump officials misunderstood how long Habba could remain as the interim head of the prosecutors’ office and kept her in place three weeks longer than the law allows. Bondi had initially appointed John Giordano as interim U.S. attorney, and he was sworn in on March 3. Giordano left the post a few weeks later to become U.S. Ambassador to Namibia, and Habba succeeded him on March 28. The 120-day time limit on interim appointments did not restart when one interim appointee was replaced by another, Brann ruled.

“Thus, Ms. Habba was not lawfully acting as the United States Attorney in any capacity from July 1, 2025 until at least July 24, 2025,” Brann wrote.

Indeed, in Brann’s interpretation of events, Habba’s authority to run the office expired on July 1. After that, things became murky. According to the judge’s timeline, Grace was the U.S. attorney as of July 22, when the judges picked her to run the office, and until she was terminated on July 26.

But it is unclear from the ruling who was legally in charge of the office before Grace’s appointment or after her termination. Typically, the first assistant attorney runs the office when there is an unfilled vacancy. Grace had been the first assistant attorney, a post Habba picked her for.

Brann said that allowing stacked interim appointments would effectively void the need for confirmation. “Taken to the extreme, the President could use this method to staff the United States Attorney’s office with individuals of his personal choice for an entire term without seeking the Senate’s advice and consent,” he wrote.

His ruling also has findings that could embolden those who want to check Trump’s moves to strengthen the White House’s grip on government.

“Congress is expected to speak clearly when it rebalances the separation of powers, and courts should be chary of Executive branch interpretations of structural enactments that result in greater arrogation of power to the President,” Brann wrote.

Habba was a controversial figure in New Jersey even before Trump tapped her as the state’s top federal prosecutor. She quietly settled a lawsuit with a then 21-year-old former server at Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster who alleged that after she was sexually harassed and coerced into sex by a supervisor, Habba befriended her and convinced her to sign an illegal non-disclosure agreement and accept a “paltry sum” of $15,000.

Shortly after Trump announced Habba’s appointment, she said in a right-wing podcast interview that she could help “turn New Jersey red,” alarming many who saw it as a breach of prosecutors’ non-partisanship. Her actions in the job did not allay those concerns.

In May, Habba initially charged Newark Mayor Ras Baraka with trespassing at a privately-owned immigrant detention facility in Newark even though he had been allowed within its security perimeter and left voluntarily when threatened with arrest. Days later, she charged Democratic Rep. LaMonica McIver, a Baraka protege, with assault on law enforcement officers over a scuffle that started when they arrested Baraka. At the same time, Habba dropped the charges against Baraka, drawing harsh criticism from a magistrate judge who suggested the arrest was made to “advance political agendas.”

On Thursday, before Brann’s ruling, Habba took to social media to praise a New York appeals court ruling that tossed a half billion dollar civil fraud judgment against Trump.

Habba, who represented Trump in the case, said that decision was a “resounding victory.”

Attorneys Gerry Krovatin and Abbe Lowell, who represented Pina, said in a statement that prosecutors have a responsibility “to ensure they are qualified and properly appointed.”

“We challenged the authority of Alina Habba because her appointment ignored the rules that give legitimacy to the U.S. Attorney’s office,” they said. “We appreciate the thoroughness of the court’s opinion, and its decision underscores that this Administration cannot circumvent the congressionally mandated process for confirming U.S. Attorney appointments.”