US District Attorney Statistics 2026 | Key Facts

District Attorneys in America 2026

The title “district attorney” in the United States carries two distinct meanings depending on whether you are talking about the federal system or the state system — and understanding that distinction is the single most important starting point for anyone trying to make sense of the data. At the federal level, the equivalent of a district attorney is the United States Attorney, a presidentially appointed, Senate-confirmed officer who serves as the chief federal law enforcement official within one of the 94 federal judicial districts. There are 93 United States Attorneys in total, with one serving the dual districts of Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands. Each US Attorney oversees an office staffed by Assistant United States Attorneys (AUSAs) who handle the actual courtroom work. At the state and local level, the term district attorney — also called county attorney, commonwealth attorney, or state’s attorney depending on the state — refers to the chief prosecutor of a prosecutorial district at the county or multi-county level. The Bureau of Justice Statistics tracks more than 2,330 state court prosecutor offices across the country, ranging from massive urban operations employing hundreds of attorneys to part-time offices serving rural counties with a single chief prosecutor. Together, these two prosecution systems — federal and state — define the prosecutorial architecture of the entire American justice system in 2026.

What makes the US district attorney statistics for 2026 particularly significant is the scale of disruption hitting the federal prosecutorial system simultaneously with a major reorientation of prosecution priorities at both the federal and state level. The US Attorney system — which employs approximately 10,100 EOUSA and USAO staff, of whom roughly 54 percent, or around 5,500, are classified as attorneys — experienced a seismic workforce shakeup beginning in January 2025. By end of FY 2025, the combined EOUSA and USAO workforce had contracted by 9 percent, with 2,200 separations recorded in 2025 alone compared to just 1,100 in 2024. At the prosecution level, immigration offense defendants surged 40 percent in the 12-month period ending March 31, 2025, now accounting for 40 percent of all federal criminal filings — a reshaping of the federal prosecution docket that has no recent parallel. Meanwhile, white-collar prosecutions fell sharply, with FY 2025 projected to come in at just 3,862 total white-collar prosecutions — less than half the 10,269 filed in FY 1994. The data ahead tells a story of a prosecution system being fundamentally remade in real time.

Key Facts About US District Attorneys in 2026

Source: US Department of Justice — Executive Office for United States Attorneys (justice.gov/usao/eousa); Bureau of Justice Statistics, Federal Justice Statistics 2023 (bjs.ojp.gov); TRAC Reports (Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, based on DOJ FOIA data), 2025 reports; Federal Workforce Data (OPM) as reported by The Preamble, current through December 2025; Justice Connection, January 2026

Reading through these facts, a picture of the US district attorney system in 2026 emerges that is both historically distinctive and operationally significant. The federal prosecution workforce has contracted sharply — more sharply, by percentage, than any comparable period in the past decade. The 9 percent USAO workforce decline in FY 2025, combined with 2,200 separations and a confirmed 631 attorney resignations, represents an institutional disruption of the federal prosecutorial workforce unlike anything recorded since EOUSA began tracking these statistics. To put it in concrete terms: the US Attorney system went from 1,100 separations in 2024 to 2,200 in 2025 — a 100 percent increase in exits in a single year. At the same time, the DOJ itself reported hiring over 3,400 career attorneys since January 2025, signaling that replacements are being recruited even as experienced prosecutors depart. Whether incoming attorneys have equivalent experience, expertise, and institutional knowledge is a contested and consequential question for the system heading into 2026.

The prosecution priority data tells an equally significant story at the case-type level. Immigration convictions accounted for 57.5 percent of all 10,965 federal convictions in March 2025 alone — a dominant share that reflects just how completely the prosecution docket has been reoriented toward border enforcement. The 61 percent overall prosecution rate for all matters in FY 2023 (the most recent BJS full-year data) masks dramatic variation by offense type: prosecutors filed in 70 percent of immigration matters and 70 percent of drug matters, but at far lower rates for white-collar crime. White-collar prosecution rates have been falling for decades — from a peak of over 10,000 cases in FY 1994 to just 4,332 in FY 2024 and a projected 3,862 in FY 2025. The fact that only 44 of 4,332 FY 2024 white-collar prosecutions named a corporation as defendant underlines how thoroughly federal prosecution of business crime has retreated into a system of individual accountability rather than institutional enforcement.

Federal US Attorney Office Workforce Statistics in the US 2026

Source: Federal workforce data (OPM) analyzed by The Preamble, current through December 2025; Justice Connection, January 2026; CBS News, January–February 2026; Minnesota Star Tribune, February 3, 2026; PBS NewsHour, January 2026; US Department of Justice official statements (justice.gov)

The federal US Attorney workforce data for 2025 and early 2026 documents one of the most dramatic single-year staffing contractions in the history of the American prosecutorial system. When separations from the EOUSA and USAO doubled from 1,100 in 2024 to 2,200 in 2025, the practical impact on operational capacity became visible in real time. In Washington DC, the US Attorney’s Office under Jeanine Pirro publicly acknowledged it was operating with a staffing shortfall requiring 90 additional prosecutors — an extraordinary admission about a major district where January 6 prosecutions, public corruption, and a large general criminal docket all compete for the same depleted resources. In Minnesota, the criminal division of the US Attorney’s Office fell from more than 50 attorneys in prior years to fewer than 20 as of early 2026, following a wave of departures tied to a controversial immigration enforcement shooting. The DOJ’s Civil Rights Division — which historically carried approximately 600 staff — saw roughly 75 percent of its attorney workforce depart by November 2025, leaving it dramatically understaffed for its enforcement mission.

The DOJ’s response to these departures — reporting 3,400+ career attorney hires since January 2025 — is real, but the gap between departing experienced prosecutors and incoming replacements is widely described by former officials as a profound institutional knowledge deficit. Career AUSAs typically bring years of complex case experience, grand jury practice, and district-specific legal knowledge that cannot be replicated quickly. The OPM workforce data tracked by independent researchers shows that the USAO workforce contracted 9 percent in FY 2025 and a further 7 percent through December 2025, compounding to a total headcount reduction unlike any in recent memory. For districts like Minnesota, Washington DC, and those carrying heavy civil rights and public integrity caseloads, the operational consequences of these departures are being felt directly — in case backlogs, dropped prosecutions, and judicial observations about government attorney performance. The US district attorney system heading into 2026 is functioning at reduced capacity relative to its historical staffing baseline in a growing number of offices.

Federal Criminal Prosecution Rates and Declinations in the US 2026

Source: Bureau of Justice Statistics, Federal Justice Statistics 2023 (bjs.ojp.gov, NCJ 308385, December 2024); TRAC Reports, Immigration Prosecutions June 2025 and White-Collar Crime Report, May 2025 (tracreports.org, based on DOJ FOIA data)

The federal prosecution rate data for 2025 and 2026 is revealing on multiple fronts. In FY 2023 — the most recent year with complete BJS statistics — US Attorneys prosecuted 61 percent of all suspects in concluded matters, declined 26 percent, and routed 13 percent to magistrate court. Prosecution rates were highest for immigration (70%) and drug offenses (70%), where the government’s evidentiary position is typically strongest, and lowest for property offenses (44.4%) and violent crimes (53%) — categories that often involve evidentiary complexity, victim cooperation issues, or competing state court jurisdiction. The 61-day median decision time from matter receipt to prosecution or declination reflects a remarkably consistent processing pace that held steady between FY 2022 and FY 2023. But the BJS FY 2023 data is baseline — by the first half of FY 2025, TRAC data shows substantial shifts underway, with white-collar prosecution rates falling to just 24 percent and drug case prosecution rates dropping to 57 percent — both sharp declines from historical norms that reflect deliberate priority reorientation.

The most extreme numbers in the prosecution rate dataset come from the immigration category. CBP and ICE referrals to US Attorneys are prosecuted at a 98 percent rate — effectively every referral from Customs and Border Protection or ICE results in a prosecution. This is in dramatic contrast to the FBI’s 39 percent declination rate and the ATF and DEA’s ~25 percent declination rates in May 2025, which signal that non-immigration enforcement agencies are having a growing proportion of their referrals turned away. This pattern is functionally consistent with a prosecutorial system in which immigration enforcement has been declared the dominant priority, and resources for complex fraud, financial crime, civil rights enforcement, and public corruption investigations are being redirected accordingly. The long-term implication — which career prosecutors and former officials have flagged publicly — is that enforcement gaps in white-collar and civil rights prosecution create deterrence vacuums that can take years to close even after priorities shift again.

Federal Immigration Prosecution Statistics by US Attorneys in the US 2026

Source: TRAC — Immigration Prosecutions Monthly Reports, January–September 2025 (tracreports.org, based on DOJ FOIA data); Bureau of Justice Statistics, Federal Justice Statistics 2023 (bjs.ojp.gov); TRAC, Referrals for Criminal Prosecution of Immigration Violations, June 2025

Federal immigration prosecutions by US Attorneys are at the center of the story of the US district attorney system in 2026, and the monthly data shows a pattern that is volatile, escalating, and historically significant. By March 2025, immigration convictions had climbed to 57.5 percent of all 10,965 federal convictions — meaning that more than half of every federal criminal conviction handed down that month was an immigration offense. The CBP-to-prosecution pipeline has tightened to an extraordinary degree: 77 percent of all adult apprehensions by Border Patrol agents in May 2025 were referred for criminal prosecution — a rate that even during the first Trump administration’s “Zero Tolerance” policy of 2018–2019 was never reached. The September 2025 monthly figure of 5,966 new immigration prosecutions, up 32.5 percent from September 2024, marks the accelerating end to a year in which immigration prosecution surged nearly every quarter. The FY 2019 peak of nearly 120,000 annual immigration prosecutions remains above current annual rates, but the directional trend through the second half of 2025 suggests the gap is narrowing.

The nature of these prosecutions carries its own data story. Illegal reentry under 8 USC § 1326 has become the dominant federal charge, reflecting the enforcement priority on those with prior removal orders rather than first-time crossers. The median prison sentence for immigration convictions fell to zero months — “time served” — in April and May 2025, capturing the reality that the vast majority of these prosecutions result in minimal incarceration: arrests, processing, quick guilty pleas, and sentences of a few days already spent in custody. This pattern has been consistent across both Trump immigration enforcement eras and reflects a system that is designed primarily for deterrence signaling rather than incapacitation. CBP accounts for 70 percent of criminal immigration referrals while ICE contributes 30 percent, a ratio that reflects the border-centric emphasis of the current enforcement posture. The 98 percent prosecution rate for CBP and ICE referrals — compared to the overall 61 percent prosecution rate for all matters in FY 2023 — is one of the most striking enforcement asymmetries in the entire federal justice data landscape.

White-Collar and Non-Immigration Federal Prosecution Trends in the US 2026

Source: TRAC Reports — Federal Prosecution of White-Collar Crimes, May 2025 (tracreports.org); TRAC — Referrals for Criminal Prosecution of Immigration Violations, June 2025; Bureau of Justice Statistics, Federal Justice Statistics 2023 (bjs.ojp.gov)

The white-collar and non-immigration prosecution data for US district attorneys in 2025–2026 reveals a system in the early stages of a significant enforcement reorientation whose full consequences will take years to appear in conviction statistics. Because white-collar cases typically carry a three-year average lag from filing to sentencing, the drop in new FY 2025 white-collar prosecutions to a projected 3,862 will not show up dramatically in conviction counts until 2027 and 2028. The current conviction numbers actually remain higher than new prosecution filings because they are clearing out cases prosecuted under prior administrations. The 24 percent white-collar prosecution rate in the first half of FY 2025 is the lowest rate recorded in the TRAC dataset, which extends back to 1986. At that rate, prosecutors are declining more than three out of every four white-collar referrals they receive — a threshold that former DOJ officials describe as a functional abandonment of white-collar enforcement for the current period. Health care fraud, tax fraud, and federal program fraud prosecutions have all trended down in the FY 2025 data, consistent with reports that FBI agents were instructed to redirect roughly one-third of their time toward immigration enforcement.

The drug prosecution rate dropping to 57 percent in the first half of FY 2025 — down from a consistent 70 to 80 percent over the prior years — is a quieter but significant data point. Drug cases have historically been the bedrock of federal prosecution caseloads outside immigration, and a 13-percentage-point decline in prosecution rates for drug referrals translates directly into thousands of cases each year that are now being declined rather than charged. The FBI’s 39 percent declination rate in May 2025 — compared to CBP and ICE’s near-zero declination rate — is perhaps the starkest single number illustrating the enforcement hierarchy that has taken shape under the current DOJ leadership. Resources are finite: when immigration enforcement absorbs 70 percent of the prosecution docket, every other category competes for the remaining 30 percent with fewer prosecutors and a leaner institutional infrastructure than in any recent year.

State District Attorney (Prosecutor) Office Statistics in the US 2026

Source: Bureau of Justice Statistics — Prosecutors in State Courts series (bjs.ojp.gov); BJS National Survey of Prosecutors 2020; BJS Census of State Court Prosecutors 2007 and 2001; BJS FY 2023 Census of Prosecutor Offices grant announcement

The state-level district attorney system in 2026 is structurally vast and operationally diverse in ways that the federal system simply is not. With more than 2,330 prosecutor offices spread across all 50 states, the system ranges from the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office — one of the largest prosecution offices in the world, employing hundreds of deputy DAs and handling hundreds of thousands of cases annually — to offices in rural Wyoming, Montana, or Alaska where a single elected chief prosecutor may personally handle every felony case in a multi-county district. The BJS 2020 National Survey of Prosecutors surveyed 750 of 2,347 offices and found a system still defined by its fundamentally local character: most chief prosecutors are locally elected officials who answer directly to their communities rather than to any state or federal authority. The most recent full census data from 2007 counted 2,330 offices, and the 2005 staffing benchmark of approximately 78,000 combined attorneys, investigators, and support staff nationally remains the most comprehensive count of the total state prosecution workforce — a figure that has undoubtedly grown since then, though a full updated census has been commissioned through BJS’s FY 2023 Census of Prosecutor Offices initiative and is expected to deliver new figures.

The operational diversity of state prosecutor offices creates statistical patterns that national averages obscure. The median annual office budget of $355,000 in 2005 captures the small-office reality of the majority of prosecutor offices — most of which serve counties with modest populations and limited prosecutorial resources. Larger urban offices operate on budgets of tens of millions of dollars and employ specialized units for homicide, domestic violence, cybercrime, financial crimes, and sex offenses. By 2005, 60 percent of all state prosecutor offices were already handling cases under their state’s computer crime statute — a figure that has only risen since then as digital evidence has become central to virtually every category of crime. The BJS FY 2023 Census of Prosecutor Offices represents the most significant investment in state prosecutor data collection in over a decade, collecting comprehensive operational and staffing data from all 2,330+ offices; its published results, when available, will provide the first complete national picture of the state prosecution workforce since the 2007 census.

Federal Criminal Conviction and Sentencing Statistics by US Attorneys in the US 2026

Source: Bureau of Justice Statistics, Federal Justice Statistics 2023 (bjs.ojp.gov, December 2024); TRAC Reports — White-Collar Crime Prosecution, May 2025; TRAC — Immigration Prosecutions, March–May 2025 (tracreports.org, based on DOJ FOIA data)

The federal criminal conviction and sentencing statistics compiled by US Attorneys in 2026 paint a picture of a prosecution system that is extraordinarily efficient at securing convictions — once it decides to prosecute. The 91.1 percent conviction rate for all adjudicated federal defendants in FY 2023 is among the highest in any court system in the developed world. The reason for that high rate is largely structural: US Attorneys exercise extremely careful pre-filing screening, prosecuting only 61 percent of suspects in matters that reach their desks. By the time a case is filed in federal court, the evidentiary package has typically been assembled over months, the 61-day median prosecution decision window has been used to assess strength of evidence, and plea negotiation frameworks are in place. Only 2.2 percent of convicted defendants were convicted at trial, while the remaining 97.8 percent pleaded guilty — a ratio that reflects the leverage federal mandatory minimum sentences and sentencing guidelines give prosecutors in securing pleas. The 0.4 percent acquittal rate is one of the lowest of any court system in the world, a function of both careful case selection and the substantial power imbalance between federal prosecutorial resources and the resources of most individual defendants.

The sentencing data provides additional texture. The 316-day median from criminal filing to disposition in FY 2023 means that the average federal criminal case is resolved within roughly ten months of charging — a pace that reflects the guilty plea dominance of the system rather than its trial capacity. White-collar crimes carry dramatically longer case timelines: the average delay of three years from filing to sentencing means that white-collar prosecution decisions made today under reduced FY 2025 filing rates will not fully appear in conviction data until 2028. The DEA’s 25,110 arrests in FY 2023 — with methamphetamine accounting for 7,381 arrests and fentanyl/other opioids 6,688 — remain the backbone of federal drug enforcement even as prosecution rates for drug referrals fell to 57 percent in the first half of FY 2025. The stark contrast between the zero-month median prison sentence for immigration convictions in April–May 2025 and the 84-month average sentence for insurance fraud captures in a single comparison the enormous range of consequences that flow from US Attorney prosecution decisions.

Disclaimer: The data reports published on The Global Files are sourced from publicly available materials considered reliable. While efforts are made to ensure accuracy, no guarantees are provided regarding completeness or reliability. The Global Files is not liable for any errors, omissions, or damages resulting from the use of these reports.