A federal judge has ruled that Lindsey Halligan was unlawfully appointed as the interim U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, leading the judge to dismiss the indictments of former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James.
The indictments are dismissed “without prejudice,” meaning they could theoretically be brought again by a lawful prosecutor.
U.S. District Judge Cameron McGowan Currie issued similar separate opinions on Monday in Comey’s and James’ cases explaining her decision.
After President Donald Trump demanded action against political opponents Comey and James, his administration installed Halligan as the temporary leader of the federal prosecutor’s office just outside of Washington.
She was a White House aide and personal lawyer to Trump who hadn’t prosecuted a case before. The prior head of the Virginia office was ousted after he resisted bringing cases against Comey and James. Halligan secured their indictments over the objection of career prosecutors. Judges reviewing her work thus far have raised several issues early in her tenure, including criticizing her apparent “fundamental misstatements of the law” to the Comey grand jury.
Citing federal law permitting temporary 120-day appointments of U.S. attorneys, Currie wrote that the clock began running on Jan. 21 with the appointment of the prior prosecutor, Erik Siebert, who was later forced out. “When that clock expired on May 21, 2025, so too did the Attorney General’s appointment authority,” Currie wrote. “Consequently, I conclude that the Attorney General’s attempt to install Ms. Halligan as Interim U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia was invalid and that Ms. Halligan has been unlawfully serving in that role since September 22, 2025,” she wrote.
Currie said the power to appoint another interim top prosecutor for the Virginia district now lies with the judges of that district, until a U.S. attorney is nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate.
As for her reasoning to not permanently dismiss the indictments, the judge cited precedent that, she wrote, “essentially unwound the actions taken by the unconstitutionally appointed officer and restored the affected party to the position the party occupied before being subjected to those invalid acts.” So, she did the same for the Comey and James indictments. Yet in Comey’s case, she flagged a possible statute of limitations issue, so if a lawful prosecutor tries to reindict him, that’s something that could be litigated further.
Comey, whom Trump fired as director of the FBI during his first presidential term, had pleaded not guilty to charges of lying to Congress and obstructing Congress during 2020 Senate testimony. James pleaded not guilty to bank fraud charges.
The appointment issue is just one of several motions to dismiss that Comey and James have raised in their respective cases, another big one being vindictive prosecution. The appointment issue required an out-of-district judge to handle, and the matter fell to Currie, a South Carolina judge who held a joint hearing with Comey’s and James’ lawyers and the DOJ before issuing her ruling. Judges around the country had previously deemed unlawful the attempted installations of other lawyers to lead prosecutors’ offices in the Trump Justice Department, including Alina Habba in New Jersey. Yet that still hasn’t led to defendants being able to dismiss their cases as a result of that illegality. “The official who purported to secure and sign the indictment was invalidly appointed to her position as interim U.S. Attorney. Because of that fundamental constitutional and statutory defect, the indictment is a nullity and must be dismissed,” Comey’s lawyers wrote in his motion to dismiss, adding that dismissal should be permanent “in order to deter the government’s willfully unlawful conduct.” Likewise in her motion, James’ lawyers wrote that dismissal is warranted because “there is no evidence that any other government attorney played a role in securing the indictment.” This is a developing story. Check back for updates. Subscribe to the Deadline: Legal Newsletter for expert analysis on the top legal stories of the week, including updates from the Supreme Court and developments in the Trump administration’s legal cases.
Jordan Rubin is the Deadline: Legal Blog writer. He was a prosecutor for the New York County District Attorney’s Office in Manhattan and is the author of “Bizarro," a book about the secret war on synthetic drugs. Before he joined MS NOW, he was a legal reporter for Bloomberg Law.
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