Trump taps Jamie McDonald to lead Southern District of New York office

Donald Trump chose James M. McDonald, a Sullivan & Cromwell partner and former federal prosecutor, to run the Southern District of New York, the Justice Department office that covers Manhattan, the Bronx, and six surrounding counties. The pick places a lawyer with deep ties to Trump’s legal world at the helm of one of the country’s most powerful prosecutorial posts, where independence from politics has long been part of the office’s identity.

McDonald’s résumé stretches across several of the federal government’s most consequential legal shops. He once served as an assistant U.S. attorney in the Southern District of New York, later became director of enforcement at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission during Trump’s first term, worked in the White House Counsel’s Office during the George W. Bush administration, and clerked for Chief Justice John Roberts. He is now a litigation partner at Sullivan & Cromwell, a firm with a growing role in Trump’s legal orbit.

Trump announced on June 13, 2026, that he planned to nominate McDonald to replace Jay Clayton, whom Trump had just picked to serve as director of national intelligence. Trump said he did not want to move Clayton until McDonald was in place, signaling that the transition was being managed as part of a broader reshuffling of top national security and justice posts.

The appointment also sharpened questions about how McDonald would handle the Southern District’s wide-ranging docket. The office investigates and prosecutes terrorism, sanctions evasion, export control violations, espionage, malign foreign influence, transnational repression, narcotics trafficking, weapons trafficking, securities fraud, and public corruption. It has sat continuously in New York since 1789, a history that has made it a benchmark for aggressive, politically sensitive federal enforcement.

Those concerns are heightened by McDonald’s recent work. He helped with Trump’s pending appeal of his New York hush-money conviction, and Trump has described him as a personal lawyer. McDonald also played a central role in Sullivan & Cromwell’s work for major corporate clients and in efforts to negotiate Justice Department settlements or dismissals in high-profile matters. For critics, that mix of corporate defense, Trump loyalty and federal enforcement experience raises a basic test: whether McDonald could enforce the law in a district that has long been defined by its distance from political power, even as he arrives from its center.