Over 10,000 Lawyers Have Left the Trump Administration, NYT Analysis Finds
More than 10,000 federal lawyers have departed the Trump administration since the beginning of 2025, according to a New York Times analysis of federal employment data — a striking loss of legal talent that has left agencies struggling to find attorneys to carry out the president’s agenda. Roughly one in five lawyers who worked in the federal government at the end of 2024 had left by March 2026, the analysis found.
The Scope of the Exodus
The departures span nearly every major federal agency, with the Justice Department bearing the heaviest losses. More than 3,300 attorneys left the DOJ between January 2025 and February 2026, while only about 800 were hired, according to USA Today. Of those who left, roughly 740 held leadership positions, and departing lawyers averaged approximately 14 years of DOJ service.
The Department of Education lost 53 percent of its 645 lawyers — the highest percentage loss of any agency. The Department of Defense lost roughly 700 attorneys, and the Department of Health lost nearly 300. The only agency to gain lawyers was the Department of Homeland Security, which required more legal resources to handle increased immigration litigation stemming from Trump’s mass deportation plan.
A Hollowed-Out Justice Department
Some divisions within the DOJ have been decimated. The Civil Rights Division lost approximately 75 percent of its lawyers — about 300 out of 400 — in the first seven months of the new administration, according to division head Harmeet Dhillon, who described the figure as a boast on a Breitbart News podcast, signaling the administration’s intent to redirect the division’s priorities.
The Environment and Natural Resources Division lost at least 140 lawyers — one-third of its staff — in Trump’s first year back in office. The Tax Division, created in 1934, was dissolved in late 2025, with more than 40 percent of its tax appeals lawyers retiring, resigning, or being temporarily transferred.
Environmental enforcement has effectively collapsed. An Earthjustice analysis found that the DOJ imposed only $15.1 million in civil penalties during the first 11 months of Trump’s return, compared to $1.88 billion the year before, as The Independent reported.
Why Lawyers Are Leaving
The exodus reflects both forced departures and voluntary resignations. In Trump’s first month back in office, the DOJ fired dozens of prosecutors who worked on January 6 cases and those who investigated Trump himself. Career officials were reassigned to immigration enforcement roles, and a deferred resignation program offered several months of pay-without-work to those who opted to leave.
Several prosecutors resigned after the administration ordered them to drop a bribery case against then-New York City Mayor Eric Adams. Others left after witnessing what they describe as the politicization of the department.
“When political leaders come into the department and immediately begin acting like tyrants, and purging the people who know how to run things, that’s going to have a really destabilizing effect, and it absolutely has,” Stacey Young, a former senior attorney in the DOJ Civil Division and Civil Rights Division who left days into the new administration, told USA Today.
The departures have also created a recruitment crisis. The DOJ is now offering $25,000 signing bonuses and lowering hiring standards to attract new talent — a stark departure from the days when the department received hundreds or thousands of applications per opening.
Consequences in the Courtroom
The loss of experienced lawyers is having tangible effects in federal courtrooms. Judge Patrick J. Schiltz, a George W. Bush appointee in Minnesota, found that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement violated 210 court orders across 143 separate cases. “The Court is not aware of another occasion in the history of the United States in which a federal court has had to threaten contempt — again and again and again — to force the United States government to comply with court orders,” he wrote in a February order.
Just Security, a law and policy publication based at New York University, identified 34 cases where courts expressed concerns about noncompliance and 90 cases where courts expressed distrust of government information during the first year of the current administration.
“You have judges today questioning whether they can adhere to what a DOJ attorney tells them in court, and that’s just unfathomable to me,” Gilbert Rothenberg, a former longtime DOJ Tax Division official, told USA Today.
The Administration’s Defense
The White House and DOJ have defended the changes. “President Trump will not waver when lawfully implementing the agenda he was elected on,” Abigail Jackson, a White House spokesperson, said in a statement. DOJ spokesperson Natalie Baldassarre described the department as “the most efficient Department of Justice in American history,” citing a record 24 successful Supreme Court rulings and the lowest murder rate in 125 years.
Conservative supporters argue the reallocation of resources reflects legitimate policy priorities. “The changes and re-allocation of resources at the Justice Department reflect the prosecutorial priorities of this Administration, as they do in any administration,” Zach Smith, a senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation, told USA Today.
Long-Term Implications
Former officials warn that the damage may be lasting. The loss of institutional knowledge — with departing lawyers averaging 14 years of experience — creates a knowledge gap that new hires cannot quickly fill. Top law graduates are increasingly reluctant to join an administration they view as politicized.
“A lot of people my age are asking, ‘Is it worth getting a job, and will that help career-wise — having one year of Trump administration experience on your résumé?’” Matthew Duray, a conservative Republican and first-year law student at George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School, told the New York Times.
Andrew Mergen, a former DOJ Environment and Natural Resources Section official who now teaches at Harvard, said he is now “extremely cautious” about recommending federal government work. “I came here to be an evangelist for federal government work, and I’m now in a position where I am extremely cautious about how I talk about sending people to work in the federal government,” he told USA Today.
Stacey Young summed up the long-term outlook bluntly: “All of that will take years and years to repair, if it can be repaired at all.”
What to Watch For
The exodus has already boosted the ranks of Democratic state attorneys general offices and advocacy groups challenging administration policies in court. Several former DOJ prosecutors have launched private firms or announced campaigns for federal office. The question now is whether the administration can fill critical legal positions — and whether a future administration can rebuild the institutional capacity and reputation of the Justice Department.
As the CBS News report noted, the historic turnover has proven to be a treasure trove for private law firms, legal nonprofits, and political campaigns capitalizing on the wave of talented ex-prosecutors seeking new work and new missions.