# Office of Adjudication, Recruitment, and Management **OARM** is the component of the Department of Justice that adjudicates **[[FBI]] whistleblower retaliation claims** under 5 U.S.C. § 2303 and 28 C.F.R. part 27. It was formerly the Office of Attorney Recruitment and Management. FBI employees are excluded from the ordinary civil-service whistleblower channel. Their route runs instead through a closed statutory list of designated recipients, an investigation by DOJ's Office of Professional Responsibility or Office of the Inspector General (240 calendar days to a determination), and then a decision by **the Director of OARM** on whether reprisal occurred and what corrective action is owed. The claimant must show by preponderant evidence that the protected disclosure was a contributing factor in the personnel action. An OARM decision may be appealed to the **Deputy Attorney General** within 30 calendar days, and thereafter to the [[Merit Systems Protection Board]] under § 2303(d) — an outside forum added by the FY2023 NDAA. Before that amendment, the FBI whistleblower channel ended entirely inside the Department that employs the FBI. This is a stub — expand with OARM's recruitment functions, its caseload, and the pre-2023 history of the channel. ## See also - [[Federal Whistleblower Protection Crosswalk]] - [[FBI]] - [[Merit Systems Protection Board]] - [[Inspector General Oversight Tree]]