Jordan Fox is Justice Department pick for U.S. Attorney from N.J.

Jordan S. Fox has emerged as the Trump Administration’s top choice for U.S. Attorney, and she has been calling federal judges in New Jersey to test the viability of a judicial vote to seat her, the New Jersey Globe has confirmed from several sources with knowledge of the administration’s plan.

Fox has served as a special attorney in the U.S. Attorney’s Office since December, when Attorney General Pamela Bondi appointed a three-prosecutor leadership team to run the New Jersey office following a Third Circuit ruling that President Trump’s pick, Alina Habba, could not continue in the role under the Federal Vacancies Reform Act.

A 30-year-old Bergen County native, Fox joined the Justice Department in January 2025 as the Chief of Staff and Counsel in the Office of the Deputy Attorney General, and was serving as the Associate Deputy Attorney General when Bondi named her to the New Jersey post.

Fox supervises the Civil and Appellate Divisions, while Senior Counsel Philip Lamparello runs the Criminal and Special Prosecutions Division, and Ari Fontecchio heads the Administrative Division.  (The triumvirate arrangement has drawn a legal challenge that came before a federal judge last month.)

Trump has no immediate plans to nominate a U.S. Attorney for New Jersey; instead, the Justice Department wants the seventeen U.S. District Court Judges from the state to meet and select Fox for the post.  That’s what happened in 2018 when Trump bypassed the traditional U.S. Senate confirmation path to get Craig Carpenito in the position.

Habba was initially named interim U.S. Attorney in March 2025 after serving on Trump’s White House staff as Counselor to the President.

Uncertainties over the U.S. Attorney’s position have led to legal challenges on the validity of some indictments and slowed down the court’s calendar.  Some judges, the New Jersey Globe has learned, view Fox as a way to end the logjam and achieve finality in the process.

But the Justice Department cannot demand a meeting of the federal judges; that decision appears to be within the purview of Chief U.S. District Court Judge Renée Bumb.

Fifteen of the federal judges in New Jersey were nominated by Democratic presidents.

In July, as Habba was reaching her 120-day limit to serve as interim U.S. Attorney, the judges met and selected First Assistant U.S. Attorney Desiree Grace to fill the post.  The judges also considered former U.S. District Court Judge Noel Hillman, but not Habba.

Once the federal judges pick someone, they can remain in office until the U.S. Senate confirms another nominee.

Grace never got to be U.S. Attorney.  Instead, Habba resigned as interim U.S. Attorney, was named First Assistant U.S. Attorney, and, with a vacancy at the top, became acting U.S. Attorney.

That prompted a legal challenge, and a federal judge decided in August that the Justice Department maneuver was improper.  In December, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit upheld the ruling.  Last week, a federal appeals court declined to reconsider its ruling that Habba could not continue leading the U.S. Attorney’s office.

Habba now serves as a senior advisor to Bondi, overseeing federal prosecutors nationwide.

Fox is a cum laude graduate of Seton Hall Law School and was a law clerk to New Jersey Supreme Court Justice Lee Solomon.  She was an associate at two prominent New Jersey law firms, Riker Danzig and Chiesa Shahinian & Giantomasi, before joining the Justice Department in early 2025 as chief of staff to Emil Bove, the principal associate deputy attorney general and now a judge of the Third Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals.  Bove came from the Ciesa law firm.

While in law school, Fox was an honors intern at the FBI’s Newark office, a judicial intern in the U.S. District Courts, and a legal intern at the U.S. Attorney’s office.