A federal judge on Monday tossed out separate criminal charges against the former F.B.I. director James B. Comey and New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, saying the loyalist prosecutor installed by President Trump to bring the cases was put into her job unlawfully.
The twin rulings, by Judge Cameron McGowan Currie, were the most significant setback yet to the president’s efforts to force the criminal justice system to punish his perceived foes. The case dismissals also served as a rebuke to Attorney General Pam Bondi, who had rushed to carry out Mr. Trump’s orders to appoint the prosecutor, Lindsey Halligan, as the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia.
In her rulings on Monday, Judge Currie said that it was unlawful to appoint two interim prosecutors in succession and dismissed the charges against Mr. Comey and Ms. James without prejudice.
The administration signaled on Monday that it would appeal the judge’s ruling, rather than acquiesce to the death of two high-profile cases the president demanded be brought.
Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, told reporters that the judge “was clearly trying to shield Letitia James and James Comey from receiving accountability” and added that the Justice Department would quickly appeal “this unprecedented action.”
The dismissal of charges without prejudice meant the government could also try to refile them, whatever the outcome of the ultimate legal fight over the appointment of Ms. Halligan, a former White House aide and personal lawyer to Mr. Trump.
In a statement, a lawyer for Mr. Comey, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, said that with the dismissal of the case against his client, “an independent judiciary vindicated our system of laws not just for Mr. Comey but for all American citizens.”
Ms. James’s lawyer, Abbe Lowell, said the court ruling showed Mr. Trump “went to extreme measures to substitute one of his allies to bring these baseless charges after career prosecutors refused. This case was not about justice or the law; it was about targeting Attorney General James for what she stood for and whom she challenged.”
Judge Currie’s ruling stems from a series of machinations that Mr. Trump undertook earlier this fall. Her legal rationale was based in part on the decision by another federal judge, Aileen M. Cannon, to dismiss an indictment against Mr. Trump over concerns about the appointment of Jack
Smith as special counsel in that case.
In late September, he rushed to oust Ms. Halligan’s predecessor, Erik S. Siebert, the career U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia, who had expressed concern that there was not sufficient evidence to indict Mr. Comey and Ms. James. The president then appointed Ms. Halligan, who had no prior experience as a prosecutor, to replace Mr. Siebert.
When Ms. Halligan did the president’s bidding by rushing to charge Mr. Comey and Ms. James, it marked a generational erosion of the tradition of the White House keeping distance from the Justice Department’s affairs.
The indictment she secured against Mr. Comey charged him with lying to and obstructing Congress during testimony he gave in September 2020 about whether, as F.B.I. director, he had authorized leaks to the media about sensitive political investigations.
Not long after, Ms. James was charged with bank fraud and making false statements in loan documents for a home she had purchased in Norfolk, Va.
Ms. James said in a written statement that she was “heartened by today’s victory and grateful for the prayers and support I have received from around the country.”
The manner in which the judge dismissed the Comey indictment could now lead to a legal fight over whether the government can refile the charges before another grand jury.
Mr. Comey was indicted just days before the five-year statute of limitations was set to run out on any charges stemming from his congressional testimony. His lawyers and a magistrate judge have said the statute has expired, meaning the charges cannot be refiled.
Government prosecutors, however, have argued in court that the statute has not expired because the clock was essentially paused when the indictment was returned. Mr. Comey’s legal team signaled Monday it was likely to fight any attempt to revive the case, insisting that the statute of limitations had run.
Judge Currie said that Mr. Trump and his attorney general, Ms. Bondi, had circumvented the law through the manner in which Ms. Halligan was elevated to oversee one of the country’s most critical federal prosecutors’ offices.
The judge noted that both Ms. Halligan and Mr. Siebert had been serving in an interim capacity.
But the attorney general is permitted to appoint only one interim U.S. attorney to serve for a temporary 120-day period, Judge Currie noted. The law does not allow the appointment of successive interim prosecutors, the judge said, or the White House could keep installing pliant people in powerful positions and get around the constitutional requirement that the Senate confirm them.
Judge Currie wrote that if she did not dismiss the indictments, the consequences to the criminal justice system would be enormous.
“It would mean the government could send any private citizen off the street — attorney or not — into the grand jury room to secure an indictment so long as the attorney general gives her approval after the fact,” she wrote. “That cannot be the law.”
