WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump has named Craig Trainor, the Housing and Urban Development Department’s fair housing chief, as acting head of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, Attorney General Todd Blanche announced on X on Tuesday evening.
“I am pleased to announce that President Trump has appointed Craig Trainor as Acting Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division,” Blanche wrote, thanking Trainor “for taking on this critical role.”
Trainor takes over from Harmeet Dhillon, who resigned on Nov. 5. Her principal deputy, Jesus Osete, ran the division in the days between her departure and Blanche’s announcement.
At HUD, Trainor has served since October 2025 as assistant secretary for fair housing and equal opportunity, a Senate-confirmed post in which he oversees nationwide enforcement of federal fair housing and civil rights laws. Blanche called him “the principal architect of HUD’s civil rights enforcement policies, which cut the Biden-era fair housing case backlog in half.”
Trainor has also worked on Capitol Hill. He was senior special counsel to Rep. Jim Jordan on the House Judiciary Committee, where he scrutinized the Biden administration’s Justice Department and served as lead counsel on an inquiry into allegations of censorship and antisemitic harassment on college campuses. House Republicans elected Jordan as their minority leader for the next Congress on Tuesday.
Before that, Trainor served as acting assistant secretary for civil rights at the Education Department, worked for the America First Policy Institute and spent more than a decade practicing criminal defense and civil rights law in New York City.
The division he now leads looks very different from the one Dhillon inherited. A Trump ally confirmed in April 2025, Dhillon redirected it toward obtaining state voter rolls and challenging diversity policies. Hundreds of attorneys left during her tenure, and the division dropped investigations into alleged constitutional violations by police departments.
Trainor inherits that workload, including lawsuits accusing UCLA and Harvard University of tolerating antisemitism on their campuses.
Brian Nieves, a former chief of staff to Blanche, praised the choice on X. “I had the chance to work with and get to know Craig on the House Judiciary Committee and know firsthand how talented and dedicated he is,” Nieves wrote. “He’ll do a fantastic job in this role. Congrats, brother!”
The appointment fills one of several senior vacancies at the Justice Department since last week’s midterm elections, in which Democrats won control of Congress. National Security Division chief John Eisenberg and Jason Reding Quiñones, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida, resigned on Friday, and Civil Division chief Brett Shumate resigned on Monday. According to the Washington Examiner, Blanche has interviews scheduled this week for at least two other recently vacated posts.
Whether Trump will nominate Trainor for the job permanently, a step that would require Senate confirmation, is not yet clear, MS NOW reported.