# DOJ Component Tree An ASCII-art map of the **Department of Justice** one level deeper than the [[Executive Branch Org Chart]] shows it — the law-enforcement components, the litigating divisions, the legal-advice offices, the 93 U.S. Attorneys, the immigration courts, and the internal-oversight tier, with current heads as of **August 13, 2026**. This is the department that holds the power to investigate, charge, and imprison, which is why control of it is the keystone of every other capture fight. The structural story here is the mirror image of the [[DHS Component Tree]]. DHS runs half its operational components on acting officials; DOJ has confirmed heads nearly everywhere. What DOJ shows instead is **who** fills the seats: the top of the department — Attorney General, Associate Attorney General, Solicitor General — is staffed by lawyers who personally defended Donald Trump or his co-defendants in court, while the badge-and-gun components below went to conventional career appointees. The capture is concentrated in the offices that decide **what to charge and what to argue**, not the ones that carry the guns. > [!note] How to read this chart > **★** marks a Senate-confirmed head. **(acting)** marks an official serving without confirmation for that seat. **[vacant]** marks an unfilled office. Sub-units are institutions, not named individuals. Bracketed notes flag mid-term changes with dates. The Bureau of Prisons directorship and the FBI deputy directorships require no Senate confirmation, so they carry no ★. ``` U.S. DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE — COMPONENTS & LEADERSHIP (as of August 13, 2026) │ AG office created 1789 · department built around it 1870 · ~115,000 employees │ ★ = Senate-confirmed head (acting) = serving without confirmation for the seat │ ■ ATTORNEY GENERAL ★ — Todd Blanche [confirmed 50–49 Aug 8, sworn Aug 10, 2026; │ acting since Apr 2, 2026; replaced P. Bondi] │ Deputy Attorney General ......... [VACANT] [Blanche's own former seat; 25 components │ │ and 93 U.S. Attorneys report to it] │ Associate Attorney General ...... Stanley Woodward ★ │ Solicitor General ............... D. John Sauer ★ │ Chief of Staff · Office of Public Affairs · Office of Legislative Affairs │ ├─◆ LAW ENFORCEMENT COMPONENTS (the badge-and-gun tier) │ │ │ ├─ FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION (FBI) ... Director: Kash Patel ★ │ │ │ Co-Deputy Directors: Andrew Bailey · Christopher Raia │ │ │ [D. Bongino resigned Jan 3, 2026; Raia named Jan 9, 2026] │ │ ├─ National Security Branch (counterterrorism · counterintelligence · WMD) │ │ ├─ Criminal, Cyber, Response & Services Branch │ │ ├─ Intelligence Branch (an element of the Intelligence Community) │ │ ├─ Science & Technology Branch (Quantico lab · CJIS · NICS gun checks) │ │ └─ 55 field offices · ~350 resident agencies · legal attachés abroad │ │ │ ├─ DRUG ENFORCEMENT ADMINISTRATION (DEA) ... Administrator: Terry Cole ★ │ │ ├─ Operations Division (domestic field divisions · foreign offices) │ │ ├─ Diversion Control Division (the prescription-opioid registration regime) │ │ └─ Special Operations Division (multi-agency intercept coordination) │ │ │ ├─ ALCOHOL, TOBACCO, FIREARMS & EXPLOSIVES Director: Robert Cekada ★ │ │ │ (ATF) [sworn Apr 30, 2026; Deputy: K. de Tineo] │ │ ├─ Field Operations (25 field divisions) │ │ ├─ Industry Operations (federal firearms licensee inspection) │ │ └─ National Tracing Center · National Firearms Act Branch │ │ │ ├─ U.S. MARSHALS SERVICE (USMS) ............ Director: Gadyaces Serralta ★ │ │ ├─ Judicial security (protection of federal judges and courthouses) │ │ ├─ Fugitive apprehension · witness security · asset forfeiture │ │ └─ 94 district offices, each with a presidentially appointed U.S. Marshal │ │ │ └─ FEDERAL BUREAU OF PRISONS (BOP) ......... Director: William K. Marshall III │ ├─ ~122 institutions · 6 regional offices · ~36,000 staff · ~156,000 inmates │ ├─ Residential reentry management (halfway houses) │ └─ UNICOR / Federal Prison Industries │ ├─◆ THE LITIGATING DIVISIONS (the lawyers — where charging and argument are decided) │ ├─ Criminal Division ....................... AAG: Tysen Duva │ │ (supervises, absorbs, or declines cases brought by the U.S. Attorneys) │ ├─ Civil Division .......................... AAG: Brett Shumate ★ │ │ (the largest division — defends every executive order that gets sued) │ ├─ Civil Rights Division ................... AAG: Harmeet Dhillon ★ │ │ (voting · police practices · fair housing — mission redirected 2025–26) │ ├─ Antitrust Division ...................... AAG: Omeed Assefi (acting) │ │ [G. Slater resigned Feb 12, 2026] │ ├─ National Security Division .............. AAG: John Eisenberg ★ │ │ (counterterrorism & counterintelligence prosecution · FARA unit · FISA office) │ ├─ Environment & Natural Resources Division [head unconfirmed] │ └─ Tax Division ............................ [head unconfirmed] │ ├─◆ LEGAL ADVICE & POLICY (the offices that say what the law is, before a court does) │ ├─ Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) ........... AAG: T. Elliot Gaiser ★ │ │ (binding legal opinions for the executive branch · EO form-and-legality review) │ ├─ Office of the Solicitor General (OSG) ... SG: D. John Sauer ★ │ │ (controls what the United States argues, and appeals, in the Supreme Court) │ ├─ Office of Legal Policy │ └─ Office of Justice Programs legal counsel · Office of Tribal Justice │ ├─◆ THE PROSECUTORS IN THE FIELD │ ├─ Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys (EOUSA) (Main Justice's channel to the field) │ └─ 94 judicial districts · 93 U.S. Attorneys (Guam and the N. Marianas share one) │ ├─ Presidentially appointed, Senate-confirmed — or 120-day court-appointed │ │ interim, or a first-assistant serving under the Vacancies Act │ └─ Blue slips still honored for U.S. Attorney nominations [see Confirmation │ Pipeline — the last effective minority tool in this lane] │ ├─◆ ADJUDICATION — THE IMMIGRATION COURTS │ └─ Executive Office for Immigration Review .. Director: Sirce Owen (acting) │ │ (EOIR) [D. Margolin resigned Jul 18, 2026] │ ├─ Office of the Chief Immigration Judge (~700 immigration judges, FY2026) │ └─ Board of Immigration Appeals │ [immigration judges are DOJ employees, not Article III judges — │ the AG can certify and overrule any BIA decision to himself] │ ├─◆ GRANTS, PROGRAMS & COMMUNITY │ ├─ Office of Justice Programs (BJA · BJS · NIJ · OJJDP · OVC) │ ├─ COPS Office (local police hiring grants) │ ├─ Office on Violence Against Women │ └─ Community Relations Service · INTERPOL Washington │ └─◆ OVERSIGHT & INTERNAL CHECK (the tier that polices the department) ├─ Office of the Inspector General (OIG) ├─ Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) (prosecutorial misconduct) ├─ Office of Information Policy (FOIA administration) ├─ Office of the Pardon Attorney (clemency recommendations to the President) └─ Justice Management Division (budget · procurement · personnel) ``` ## Notes Leadership verified August 13, 2026. What changed since the vault last looked: - **The Attorney General is new — five days new.** [[Todd Blanche]] was confirmed **50–49 on August 8, 2026** and sworn in on August 10. Only two Republicans, Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski, voted against; the vote was held after 4 a.m. ahead of the Senate's recess, and cleared only after Bill Cassidy announced support the previous day. Blanche had been Acting Attorney General since **April 2, 2026**, when Trump fired [[Pam Bondi]] — reportedly over her handling of the [[Jeffrey Epstein]] files and insufficiently aggressive prosecution of his opponents. He is the first Attorney General in the modern era to arrive in the office directly from having served as the President's personal criminal-defense counsel. - **The Deputy Attorney General's chair is empty.** Blanche vacated it on elevation and no successor has been named. The DAG is the department's chief operating officer: twenty-five components and all ninety-three U.S. Attorneys report through that office. Its vacancy concentrates day-to-day operational authority in an Attorney General who has held the job for less than a week — and, in practice, in Associate Attorney General [[Stanley Woodward]] and the AG's own front office. - **The top three are all Trump's former lawyers.** Blanche defended him in the Manhattan hush-money trial and the federal cases; [[D. John Sauer]], the Solicitor General, argued Trump's presidential-immunity case at the Supreme Court; [[Stanley Woodward]] was defense counsel to Trump aides and co-defendants before joining the administration as a White House counselor and then as the department's number three. [[Emil Bove]], who ran the department's early-2025 purge from the DAG's office, has since moved to the federal appellate bench. - **The FBI has two deputy directors and neither required a Senate vote.** [[Dan Bongino]] resigned January 3, 2026; [[Kash Patel]] named career counterterrorism official [[Christopher Raia]] on January 9 to share the role with [[Andrew Bailey]], the former Missouri Attorney General installed in August 2025. The arrangement splits the Bureau's number-two operational post between a career agent and an elected politician — a structure with no precedent in the Bureau's modern history. - **Antitrust lost its head for enforcing antitrust.** [[Gail Slater]] resigned February 12, 2026 at the White House's request, after clashes over a major merger review and the Live Nation remedy. **Omeed Assefi** has run the division in an acting capacity since. Slater was the administration's most visible populist-right antitrust figure, and her removal is the sharpest available test of whether the New Right's anti-monopoly rhetoric survives contact with merging parties. - **The immigration courts are back to acting leadership.** Director **Daren Margolin** resigned effective **July 18, 2026**, ten months into the job; [[Sirce Owen]], who ran EOIR in an acting capacity through the first eight months of the term, returned. The corps she oversees has grown to roughly **700 immigration judges** — EOIR hired 153 permanent IJs in FY2026, the most in its history, including a single class of 77 sworn in this year. - **ATF got a confirmed career director.** [[Robert Cekada]] was sworn in **April 30, 2026**, ending an extended run of acting leadership under officials double-hatted from other agencies. Confirmed heads also sit at DEA ([[Terry Cole]], sworn July 23, 2025), the Marshals Service ([[Gadyaces Serralta]], sworn August 1, 2025), and BOP ([[William K. Marshall III]], April 21, 2025 — a post that needs no Senate vote). - **Two litigating divisions are led by people whose heads could not be confirmed from public sources** as of this date: Environment and Natural Resources, and Tax. They are shown structurally with the head marked unconfirmed rather than guessed at. Structural notes: - **The Attorney General is not a Secretary, and the department is younger than the office.** The AG was created by the Judiciary Act of 1789; the department was built around the office in 1870. The asymmetry matters: the AG's litigating authority is personal and statutory, which is part of why "the Attorney General's independence" has always been a norm rather than a structure. - **The immigration courts sit inside the prosecuting department.** EOIR's judges are DOJ employees, its appellate board reports to the AG, and the AG may certify any Board of Immigration Appeals decision to himself and overrule it. This is the single largest adjudicatory system in the federal government that is not part of the [[Federal Judiciary Tree]]. - **Charging authority is dual.** The 93 U.S. Attorneys are independently appointed and run their own dockets, but the Criminal Division can supervise, absorb, or decline any case — which is why fights over political direction of prosecutions run through both channels at once. See [[Federal Prosecutors Hub]] for the roster. - **The OLC and the Solicitor General are the department's two authoritative voices on what the law is** — one before litigation, one at the end of it. Both are now held by confirmed appointees, and both are mapped in [[How an Executive Order Is Issued and Challenged]], where the OLC's form-and-legality review is the gate that reporting shows most often bypassed. - **The Marshals Service is the seam with the judiciary.** It protects the federal judges hearing the cases the department is losing, while reporting to the department losing them. ## See also - [[Department of Justice]] — the prose page: the capture lens, the Bondi firing, weaponization - [[Executive Branch Org Chart]] — the whole-branch map this tree zooms into - [[DHS Component Tree]] · [[Intelligence Community Tree]] · [[Federal Judiciary Tree]] — sibling maps - [[FBI]] · [[DEA]] · [[ATF]] · [[Bureau of Prisons]] · [[United States Marshals Service]] · [[Office of Legal Counsel]] · [[Solicitor General]] — component pages - [[How a Federal Prosecution Begins and Ends]] — the process companion: what the components on this tree actually do to a case, from predication to appeal, and the approval matrix that decides which components have to sign off first - [[Special Counsel Appointment and Removal Flow]] — the process companion: how a prosecutor gets carved out of this department, and how the department takes them back - [[Federal Prosecutors Hub]] — the U.S. Attorneys, special counsels, and retribution prosecutors - [[Confirmation Pipeline]] — how these seats get filled, and the Vacancies Act route around it - [[Federal Agencies Hub]] · [[Trump 2.0 Cabinet Hub]]