The office of the
attorney general was established by the
Judiciary Act of 1789. Until 1853, the salary of the attorney general was set by statute at less than the amount paid to other Cabinet members. Early attorneys general supplemented their salaries by running private law practices, often arguing cases before the courts as attorneys for paying litigants. Following unsuccessful efforts in 1830 and 1846 to make attorney general a full-time job, The "Act to Establish the Department of Justice" drastically increased the attorney general's responsibilities to include the supervision of all United States attorneys, formerly under the Department of the Interior, the prosecution of all federal crimes, and the representation of the United States in all court actions, barring the use of private attorneys by the federal government. The law also created the office of
Solicitor General to supervise and conduct government litigation in the
Supreme Court of the United States. The organization of the department was a part of the general effort to control
patronage,
retrenchment in the workforce, and to improve the status of lawyers. Grant appointed
Amos T. Akerman as attorney general and
Benjamin H. Bristow as America's first solicitor general the same week that Congress created the Department of Justice. The Department's immediate function was to preserve civil rights. It set about fighting against domestic terrorist groups who had been using both violence and litigation to oppose the
13th,
14th, and
15th Amendments to the Constitution. illustration entitled "Halt," published October 17, 1874 Both Akerman and Bristow used the Department of Justice to vigorously prosecute
Ku Klux Klan members in the early 1870s. In the first few years of Grant's first term in office, there were 1000 indictments against Klan members, with over 550 convictions from the Department of Justice. By 1871, there were 3000 indictments and 600 convictions, with most only serving brief sentences, while the ringleaders were imprisoned for up to five years in the federal penitentiary in
Albany, New York. The result was a dramatic decrease in violence in the South. Akerman gave credit to Grant and told a friend that no one was "better" or "stronger" than Grant when it came to prosecuting terrorists.
George H. Williams, who succeeded Akerman in December 1871, continued to prosecute the Klan throughout 1872 until the spring of 1873, during Grant's second term in office. Williams then placed a
moratorium on Klan prosecutions partially because the Justice Department, inundated by cases involving the Klan, did not have the manpower to continue prosecutions. With the passage of the
Interstate Commerce Act in 1887, the
federal government took on some law enforcement responsibilities, and the Department of Justice was tasked with performing these. In 1884, control of federal prisons was transferred to the new department, from the Department of the Interior. New facilities were built, including the penitentiary at
Leavenworth in 1895, and a facility for women located in
West Virginia, at
Alderson was established in 1924. In 1933, President
Franklin D. Roosevelt issued an executive order which gave the Department of Justice responsibility for the "functions of prosecuting in the courts of the United States claims and demands by, and offsenses [
sic] against, the Government of the United States, and of defending claims and demands against the Government, and of supervising the work of United States attorneys, marshals, and clerks in connection therewith, now exercised by any agency or officer..." Following the
Watergate scandal, reforms were enacted to enhance the independence of the Justice Department including the
Ethics in Government Act, and for the next 50 years, subsequent Attorneys General reinforced the independence of the Department of Justice from the president. During the
second Trump presidency, the Department's "independence and impartiality has shattered". The department has been used
to target Trump's political opponents. Trump reportedly demanded $230 million in compensation from the DOJ and the department ended an investigation into
Tom Homan receiving $50,000 which have raised
ethical concerns. As part of
Republican Party efforts to disrupt voting after the 2024 United States presidential election, the DOJ sought voter roll data from over 30 states and initiated the
2025 Texas redistricting. ==Headquarters==