President Trump is considering nominating Emil Bove III, a top Justice Department official responsible for enacting his immigration agenda and ordering the purge of career prosecutors, to be a federal appeals judge, according to people familiar with the matter.

Mr. Bove, 44, is a former criminal defense lawyer for Mr. Trump and a longtime federal prosecutor in New York. He was the Justice Department official at the center of the Trump administration’s request earlier this year to dismiss a corruption case against the mayor of New York, Eric Adams.

One of the department’s most formidable and feared political appointees in the second Trump administration, he has emerged as a top contender to fill a vacancy on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, which covers Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware, those people said.

There are two vacancies on the court — one based in New Jersey and one in Delaware. It is not clear which seat Mr. Bove is under consideration for. He has a property in Pennsylvania, and some conservatives have called for moving the Delaware-based seat to Pennsylvania.

The people familiar with the matter spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive internal matter that has not yet been publicly announced. They cautioned that the timing remains unclear, and the intentions could still shift.

If Mr. Bove is nominated for the post, Democrats are all but certain to use his Senate confirmation process to scrutinize his role in some of the Justice Department’s most contentious actions since Mr. Trump took office.