The United States attorney general (AG) is the head of the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) and is the chief law enforcement officer of the federal government of the United States. The attorney general serves as the principal advisor to the president of the United States on all legal matters. The attorney general is a statutory member of the Cabinet of the United States.
The United States Department of Justice (DOJ), also known as the Justice Department, is a federal executive department of the United States government tasked with the enforcement of federal law and administration of justice in the United States. It is equivalent to the justice or interior ministries of other countries. The department is headed by the U.S. attorney general, who reports directly to the president of the United States and is a member of the president's Cabinet. The current attorney general is Merrick Garland, who has served since March 2021.
The Executive Office for United States Attorneys (EOUSA) is the office within the Department of Justice that provides executive and administrative support for the 93 United States Attorneys located throughout the 50 states, District of Columbia, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Such support includes, but is not limited to, legal education, administrative oversight, technical support, and the creation of uniform policies. The organization of the EOUSA is laid out in Title 3 of the Justice Manual., which is provided by the United States Department of Justice.
The Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) is an office in the United States Department of Justice that supports the attorney general in their role as legal adviser to the president and all executive branch agencies. It drafts legal opinions of the attorney general and provides its own written opinions and other advice in response to requests from the counsel to the president, the various agencies of the executive branch, and other components of the Department of Justice. The office reviews and comments on the constitutionality of pending legislation. The office reviews any executive orders and substantive proclamations for legality if the president proposes them. All proposed orders of the attorney general and regulations that require the attorney general's approval are reviewed. It also performs a variety of special assignments referred by the attorney general or the deputy attorney general.
The United States Department of Justice National Security Division (NSD) handles national security functions of the department. Created by the 2005 USA PATRIOT Act reauthorization, the division consolidated all of the department's national security and intelligence functions into a single division. The division is headed by the Assistant Attorney General for National Security.
Patrick F. Philbin is an American lawyer who served as Deputy Counsel to the President and Deputy Assistant to the President in the Office of White House Counsel in the Donald J. Trump administration. He previously served in the Department of Justice during the George W. Bush administration.
Daniel Bernard Levin served as Acting Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel of the U.S. Justice Department from July 2004 until February 2005. He is notable for having upheld legal opinions during the Bush administration that narrowly defined torture and authorized enhanced interrogation techniques. These opinions were mostly secret during this period, but rumors of abuse of prisoners were widespread, particularly after the 2004 Abu Ghraib prisoner torture and abuse scandal in Iraq. These opinions were repudiated in 2009 by the Obama administration.
Steven Gill Bradbury is an American lawyer and government official who served as the General Counsel of the United States Department of Transportation. He previously served as Acting Assistant Attorney General (AAG) from 2005 to 2007 and Principal Deputy AAG from 2004 to 2009, heading the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) in the U.S. Department of Justice during President George W. Bush's second term.
Valerie Elaine Caproni is a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York.
Virginia Anne Seitz is an American attorney who specializes in constitutional law, labor law, employment law and administrative law. She served as the United States Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel in the United States Department of Justice from 2011 until stepping down in December 2013. Seitz was confirmed to the post by the Senate in a voice vote on June 28, 2011.
Dawn Elizabeth Johnsen is an American lawyer and the Walter W. Foskett Professor of Constitutional law, on the faculty at Maurer School of Law at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana. She previously served in the Biden administration as Acting Attorney General at the Office of Legal Counsel, having been appointed on January 20, 2021, by President Joe Biden, to return to the role she previously held in the Clinton administration. She was succeeded in that role in a permanent capacity by Christopher H. Schroeder, and is currently serving as the Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the same office.
Matthew Glen Olsen is an American attorney who has served as the Assistant Attorney General for the National Security Division since 2021. He is the former director of the National Counterterrorism Center.
Kenneth Leonard Wainstein is an American lawyer. He served as the first Assistant Attorney General for National Security, and later as the Homeland Security Advisor to United States President George W. Bush. In 2022 under the Biden administration, he was appointed Under Secretary of Homeland Security for Intelligence and Analysis.
Karl R. Thompson is an American lawyer and was the Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel of the United States Department of Justice from 2014 until 20 January 2017; he served as the Acting Assistant Attorney General during that period.
A set of legal memoranda known as the "Torture Memos" were drafted by John Yoo as Deputy Assistant Attorney General of the United States and signed in August 2002 by Assistant Attorney General Jay S. Bybee, head of the Office of Legal Counsel of the United States Department of Justice. They advised the Central Intelligence Agency, the United States Department of Defense, and the President on the use of enhanced interrogation techniques—mental and physical torment and coercion such as prolonged sleep deprivation, binding in stress positions, and waterboarding—and stated that such acts, widely regarded as torture, might be legally permissible under an expansive interpretation of presidential authority during the "War on Terror".
Derek Anthony West is an American attorney, former government official, and the Senior Vice President and chief legal officer of Uber. Before Uber, West was Associate Attorney General of the United States and general counsel of PepsiCo. West previously served as the Assistant Attorney General of the Civil Division, the largest litigating division in the Department of Justice.
Danielle Gray is the former Assistant to the President, Cabinet Secretary, and a Senior Advisor to U.S. President Barack Obama. Previously, Gray served as Deputy Director of the National Economic Council and Deputy Assistant to the President for Economic Policy. Gray is currently executive vice president and global chief legal officer of Walgreen Boots Alliance.
Randolph Daniel Moss is a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia.
Steven Andrew Engel is an American lawyer. He served as the United States assistant attorney general for the Office of Legal Counsel in the Trump administration. Engel, who previously worked in the George W. Bush administration as deputy assistant attorney general in the Office of Legal Counsel, was nominated by President Donald Trump on January 31, 2017, and confirmed on November 7, 2017.
Jennifer Gillian Newstead is an American attorney who served as the Legal Adviser of the Department of State.
