The Trump administration cleared the way for Alina Habba to remain in her role as the top federal prosecutor in New Jersey on Thursday, an unusual move to withdraw her from consideration, enabling her to serve in an acting capacity.

Habba’s tenure as interim U.S. attorney was set to expire on Friday, but she announced on social media that she would remain as New Jersey’s acting U.S. attorney after the Department of Justice confirmed the White House withdrew her nomination in a workaround effort to keep her in her role. Earlier this week, a panel of district judges appointed her top deputy, Desiree Grace, to lead the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of New Jersey.

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“I don’t cower to pressure,” Habba said Thursday evening, one day after Grace, also a Republican, posted to social media that she would assume her former boss’s position. “I am now the acting United States Attorney for the District of New Jersey,” she said, adding, “This is a fight for justice.”

Attorney General Pam Bondi swiftly rejected the judges’ ruling and terminated Grace’s employment, accusing the judges of attempting to subvert President Donald Trump’s authority over the Department of Justice. Trump said he has “full confidence” that Habba will be confirmed despite the ongoing uncertainty for her role.

But in a pointed post to LinkedIn Wednesday night, Grace defied the move, saying she was “prepared to follow” the court’s order and “begin to serve in accordance with the law,” possibly as soon as this Friday, when ranking DOJ officials have said Habba’s term is set to end.

The political calculus behind withdrawing Habba’s nomination serves as a workaround to the Federal Vacancies Reform Act, which does not allow the nominee for a Senate-confirmed office to hold the post on an acting basis.

Before the decision to make her acting U.S. attorney, the dispute between the Trump administration surrounded a little-known Civil War-era statute that allows district courts to appoint an interim U.S. attorney once a 120-day appointment expires, a concept that raised significant questions about whether a judge-appointed prosecutor can be removed without the president’s direct involvement.

“If Grace was appointed by the court to be U.S. Attorney under 28 U.S.C. § 546(d), then only the president can remove her,” said former federal prosecutor Neama Rahmani. “That is a U.S. attorney — not an assistant — and they are presidentially removable.”

The Trump administration and conservative attorneys have argued that there is no reason why Bondi should defer to the president’s actions in removing Grace, suggesting that doing so only diminishes the role of the president’s leadership selections in the DOJ.

Former Trump campaign surrogate David Gelman called the judges’ move not to reappoint Habba “ridiculous,” arguing, “Their job is to manage the DOJ. And who is the head of the DOJ? Pam Bondi. She has been put there by Donald Trump.”

“So the president is going to have to go and fire every person in government who their supervisor thinks isn’t performing their duties? It’s a preposterous theory,” Gelman said, describing the judges who declined to extend Habba’s time in her role as “activist” and politically motivated.

Rahmani said that judges are typically willing to give an interim appointee some leeway past the 120-day deadline while waiting for the Senate to confirm a nominee.

“It’s not common for a district court to not extend an interim appointment when they haven’t been confirmed,” he said. “Assuming they’re not completely unqualified, courts usually extend the appointment as a matter of course. In this case, they didn’t—and that’s why we’re in the situation we’re in.”

It remains unclear whether Grace intends to challenge removal from her post. The DOJ did not respond to requests for comment, while Deputy U.S. Attorney Todd Blanche implied to the New York Times that Grace was already fired by the DOJ “pursuant to the president’s authority.”

Rahmani added that if Trump fired Grace and no Senate-confirmed or interim replacement was named, Bondi herself would be forced to exercise direct authority over the office. “There will be no U.S. attorney in that district who can do the tasks of the U.S. attorney,” he said. “So the attorney general will have to step in and act for that district.”

The showdown echoes earlier executive branch fights, such as the 2017 case when Leandra English sued the Trump administration after claiming she, not Mick Mulvaney, was the rightful acting head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. English eventually dropped her challenge.

In 2020, a similar controversy erupted when then-Attorney General William Barr ousted Geoffrey Berman after judges attempted to keep him in place beyond his interim term. Barr insisted in a letter that court-appointed U.S. attorneys are “subject to removal by the President.”

Critics of the rare court-appointed prosecutor process argue that giving judges appointment power over federal prosecutors risks undermining executive control. 

Paul Clement, a veteran Supreme Court litigator who has, in recent months, been on the other side of the “v.” against the Trump administration, told the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals’ judicial conference Thursday that judges appointing executive officers is a “weird provision.”

“Maybe my conservative is peeking out here, but that’s an executive branch official,” Clement said. “It’s weird to have the judges be in that role.”

ALINA HABBA REPLACED AS NEW JERSEY’S TOP PROSECUTOR

For now, all eyes are on whether Grace seeks to file a challenge to the Trump administration’s efforts to thwart the judges’ moves to appoint her as New Jersey’s top prosecutor. Trump remains committed to seeing Habba confirmed for a permanent role by the Senate.

The Washington Examiner contacted Grace but did not receive a response.