February 20, 2026 – Federal judges in the Eastern District of Virginia appointed James W. Hundley, a longtime Virginia defense lawyer, to serve as interim U.S. attorney after the previous officeholder resigned and a court ruled that her appointment had been unlawful. Two hours later, the deputy attorney general, Todd Blanche, announced in a social media post that Hundley had been fired, asserting that “EDVA judges do not pick our US Attorney” and that only the president does. It was the second time this month that the Justice Department’s leadership had removed an interim U.S. attorney selected by federal judges, following a nearly identical episode in Albany last week.
The law permits federal judges to appoint interim U.S. attorneys when a predecessor leaves office or when a 120-day term expires, providing continuity when a vacancy would otherwise disrupt federal prosecutions. In this case, the appointment mechanism itself has become contested: when judges exercise a statutory backstop authority, the administration is rejecting that authority and reversing the outcome immediately.
This dispute is structurally distinct from episodes in which judicial orders are ignored in individual cases. It concerns who controls prosecutorial power at the point of appointment — and whether a statutory judicial backstop can function when the executive branch treats it as illegitimate. The downstream stakes are not theoretical. In the same district, indictments obtained by the prior U.S. attorney were dismissed after a judge determined she had been unlawfully installed, illustrating how contested appointment chains can destabilize prosecutorial legitimacy and make cases reversible on procedural grounds.
This report does not assess the merits of any prosecution or the underlying facts of the cases referenced in public reporting. It observes only the governance mechanics described: statutory interim appointment authority exercised by judges, immediate executive reversal, repetition across jurisdictions within a month, and the documented procedural fragility that follows from disputed appointment legitimacy.
The open question is whether courts and the Justice Department resolve the boundary through litigation and clarified practice — or whether jurisdictional instability persists, with interim appointments repeatedly contested and federal prosecutions increasingly vulnerable to reversal on process grounds.
This report is part of the NS News archive.