A federal judge dismissed the Justice Department's cases against former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James,finding that the prosecutor overseeing them was unlawfully appointed to her role.
That prosecutor is Lindsey Halligan, a 36-year-old former insurance attorney who served as one of President Trump's personal lawyers after his first term and joined his second administration as a White House aide.
Trump appointed Halligan as acting U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia in late September, the day after her predecessor, Erik Siebert, resigned under pressure from the president to bring charges against Comey and James.
In his announcement, Trump called Halligan a "tough, smart and loyal attorney" who "has the strength and determination to be absolutely OUTSTANDING in this new and very important role."
But Halligan's tenure has been mired in controversy, reaching new highs on Monday when U.S. District Judge Cameron McGowan Currie ruled in dual opinions that Halligan's appointment was unlawful.
The judge found that Halligan's appointment violated a federal statute that limits interim U.S. attorneys to 120 days in the role, because Siebert had been in that acting role since January. After 120 days without a Senate confirmation, only district courts — not the Attorney General — can fill a vacancy.
Currie wrote that Halligan, whom she describes as "a former White House aide with no prior prosecutorial experience," had "no lawful authority to present the indictment" against Comey or James. Because Halligan's was the only signature on those documents, they are rendered invalid.
"All actions flowing from Ms. Halligan's defective appointment, including securing and signing Mr. Comey's indictment, were unlawful exercises of executive power and are hereby set aside," Currie wrote.
The ruling leaves the door open for the Justice Department to appeal, which White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said it will. In an interview Monday on Fox News, she downplayed the decision as a "technical ruling" and defended Halligan's authority.
"We believe that the attorney in this case, Lindsey Halligan, is not only extremely qualified for this position but she was in fact legally appointed," Leavitt said.
Here's what to know about the prosecutor at the center of this latest political storm.
Halligan got her start in insurance law
Halligan grew up in Broomfield, Colo., a suburb about halfway between Denver and Boulder. She played softball and basketball and competed in several Miss Colorado USA pageants, earning third runner-up in 2009.
She studied politics and broadcast journalism at Regis University, the Jesuit school in Denver that Erika Kirk also attended. According to one professional biography, Halligan developed an interest in law while interning at the Denver City Attorney's Office in college.
She got her law degree from the University of Miami in 2013, interning at the Miami-Dade Public Defender's Office and the law school's Miami Innocence Clinic along the way. She began her legal career at the Florida firm Cole, Scott & Kissane, which specializes in insurance defense litigation.
Halligan became a partner at the firm in 2018 and, the following year, won praise for defeating a $500,000 property damage claim involving a leaky roof ("George and Lindsey presented evidence that the roof was old and just past its normal life expectancy," the firm said in a news release at the time).
Halligan told the Washington Post earlier this year that she first met Trump at a November 2021 event at his golf club in West Palm Beach — months after his first term ended, as he was under investigation by both the Justice Department and New York State.
"I saw the same thing that I saw when I interned at the Innocence clinic: someone who was getting railroaded by the system," Halligan told the newspaper.
Halligan went from personal lawyer to the president's assistant
Halligan joined Trump's personal legal team in 2022.
"As a Partner at the biggest Law Firm in Florida, Lindsey proved herself to be a tremendous trial lawyer, and later represented me (and WON!) in the disgraceful Democrat Documents Hoax, as well as MANY other major, high profile cases," Trump wrote on Truth Social in September.
Halligan and Trump have both said that she was at his Mar-a-Lago residence in August 2022 when the FBI raided the property as part of its investigation into his retention of classified documents. She helped defend him in that case, both in court and on TV.
A Trump-appointed federal judge ultimately dismissed it in July 2024, ruling the prosecutor had been unlawfully appointed, and the Justice Department dropped its appeal after Trump was reelected.
When Trump returned to the White House in January 2025, Halligan joined his administration with two titles: White House senior associate staff secretary and special assistant to the president.
Halligan remained visible, frequently appearing with him in the Oval Office and at the U.S. Open.
One of her most visible White House contributions was leading its controversial review of more than half a dozen Smithsonian Institution museums to "ensure alignment" with Trump's cultural directives. The Organization of American Historians has called the order, which was issued in August, an "unacceptable instance of ongoing executive overreach."
Halligan has defended and taken credit for it, telling The Washington Post that when she moved to D.C. ahead of Trump's inauguration, some of the museum exhibits she visited struck her as "weaponizing history."
"And so I talked to the president about it," Halligan said, "and suggested an executive order, and he gave me his blessing, and here we are."
Halligan is accused of missteps in the dropped cases
While the Comey and James cases were thrown out because of Halligan's lack of authority, their lawyers — as well as outside legal experts — accused Halligan of legal missteps in her effort to prosecute Trump's political enemies.
Halligan's predecessor, Siebert, had resisted bringing charges against both officials because of insufficient evidence. At the time, his office had already opened an investigation into James over bank fraud allegations related to a 2020 mortgage application for a Virginia property. Siebert's resignation came hours after Trump told reporters that he wanted the prosecutor "out."
Trump announced Halligan's appointment the following day. That's also the day Trump posted — and later deleted — a message on social media appearing to pressure Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate his political rivals: Comey, James and Democratic Sen. Adam Schiff of California.
Bondi's office issued an order authorizing Halligan for the interim U.S. attorney job less than 48 hours later, on Sept. 22. Halligan's office announced on Sept. 25 that a federal grand jury returned an indictment charging Comey with making a false statement and obstruction over 2020 Senate testimony.
That announcement came five days before the statute of limitations would have expired in Comey's case — and on Halligan's fourth day on the job.
"She started on a Monday — this was a Thursday — and tried to get this indictment in a case," former federal prosecutor Elie Honig told NPR's Morning Edition. "I will tell you, if I went into a grand jury on my fourth day on the job and tried to indict a complicated, high-stakes case like this too, I'm sure I would've screwed up as well."
In the weeks since, the grand jury process has been the subject of growing legal questions. Earlier this month, a magistrate judge took the unusual step of ordering the Justice Department to turn over all grand jury materials to Comey's defense team, citing a "disturbing pattern of profound investigative missteps."
Scrutiny further increased after a hearing last week, at which Halligan confirmed that the full grand jury never reviewed the final indictment against Comey — a shocking revelation that could be enough to get the case dismissed, though a prosecutor at the hearing downplayed it as a "paperwork error."
Halligan initially sought three counts against Comey, but the grand jury rejected one of them. Then Halligan or someone else created a new indictment with renumbered charges but didn't bring that back to the grand jury for a vote, a step that Honig said "any semi-experienced prosecutor" would know not to skip.
"It would take 10 minutes," he added. "Instead, she just brings it to the judge with two grand jurors with her, which is not enough. And now she's created this problem for herself out of a sheer lack of competence."
Days later, a judge threw the case out for an entirely different reason.
Copyright 2025 NPR