Harmeet Dhillon resigned on Thursday as head of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, becoming the first senior official to leave the administration since Democrats swept this week’s midterm elections.
Attorney General Todd Blanche confirmed the resignation in a post on X, saying Dhillon had led the division “with conviction” for the past 18 months.
Dhillon, a longtime ally of President Donald Trump, had led the division since her Senate confirmation in April 2025. She had told allies she planned to leave after the midterms, according to people familiar with the matter, and Bloomberg Law reported she intended to return to her California law firm, the Dhillon Law Group.
Her tenure reshaped the division. It moved away from its traditional work on voting rights and police reform and toward religious liberty cases, gun rights, and investigations into university admissions and campus antisemitism. The division also pressed states for unredacted voter rolls as part of the administration’s election integrity drive.
More than 75 percent of the division’s lawyers left during her term, according to CNN, either fired or resigned. Dhillon said in August 2025 that about 300 of the division’s roughly 400 lawyers had departed in its first seven months.
Her replacement will need nomination by the president and confirmation by the Senate. Former officials told Bloomberg Law the department expects more top political appointees to leave before the new year.
Source: USA Today
