First posted on Instagram · @profilopolitics
Harmeet Dhillon plans to step down as Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights, the first senior Justice Department official to leave after the Democrats' sweeping midterm wins, Bloomberg reported on Thursday. Dhillon, who was confirmed by the Senate in April 2025, has told allies she will leave the department after the midterm elections, according to four people familiar with the matter, and her formal announcement is expected as soon as Thursday.
Dhillon, a former Republican Party official and campaign lawyer for President Donald Trump, has vastly transformed the Civil Rights Division since taking charge. The division shifted toward conservative causes, including religious liberties, and formed a new Second Amendment section, while abandoning key priorities from the Biden era. The division has launched more than 100 investigations into university admissions practices, and Dhillon recruited dozens of new attorneys with backgrounds in conservative advocacy to work on litigation over state voter rolls, immigration and alleged antisemitism on college campuses.
The overhaul came as hundreds of career attorneys left the division. Earlier reporting put the departures at more than 250 attorneys since January, roughly 70 percent of the division's personnel, after Dhillon steered it away from its historic priorities such as voting-rights enforcement and investigations of unconstitutional policing.
Dhillon has previously said she planned to return to her California-based law firm, Dhillon Law Group, after her time at the Justice Department. She told Bloomberg reporters and editors in an August roundtable that she planned to return to the firm, which has been managed by her brother, Mandeep Singh Dhillon, in her absence and is now much smaller than it once was. "In terms of private practice, when the president is done with me, I loved being a lawyer in private practice," she said at the time, adding that she planned to take what she learned at the department and "continue to help plaintiffs."
Dhillon would be the second Senate-confirmed Justice Department official to depart in recent weeks, following Patrick Davis' resignation from the Office of Legislative Affairs last month. Former officials said the department is bracing for multiple other top political appointees to leave in the lame-duck period before the New Year. Dhillon and Justice Department spokespeople did not immediately respond to requests for comment, and the department has not confirmed her plans.