Two top Justice Department officials stood behind the decision to remove Maurene Comey from her post as a federal prosecutor. On Monday, a federal judge ruled that no law gave them the power to do it.
U.S. District Judge Jesse M. Furman issued a 55-page opinion in the lawsuit Comey filed against the department. He sided with her on most of her claims.
Comey, the daughter of former FBI Director James Comey, worked as an assistant U.S. attorney in the Southern District of New York for roughly a decade. The department fired her last July.
The administration explained the decision only after the fact.
Trump officials said former Attorney General Pam Bondi “directed” the removal and that Todd Blanche “ratified” it. Blanche took over as acting attorney general in April.
Furman rejected the government’s defense. He wrote that Comey’s termination “was not authorized by any statute,” despite the administration’s arguments to the contrary.
The judge also found the firing broke the Civil Service Reform Act, which restricts the conditions under which the government can remove federal employees.
Furman then addressed the administration’s reasoning directly.
“Indeed, to accept Defendants’ argument would be to unsettle the very equilibrium established by this Nation’s constitutional system,” he said.
His order carries financial consequences for the department.
Furman directed the Justice Department to reinstate Comey retroactively and to pay her back wages from the day of her firing through December 20, 2025. She accepted a private-sector job that day.
Comey has not said whether she will go back to the department.
Her legal team celebrated the result. Her lawyers called the decision a “hard-earned victory” for Comey and other civil servants.
In a statement, they said the outcome “reaffirms our bedrock system of checks and balances.”
During her years in the New York office, Comey led some of the Justice Department’s most prominent cases.
Her docket included prosecutions of Jeffrey Epstein, Sean “Diddy” Combs and former Sen. Robert Menendez.
Furman cited that résumé in his opinion. He wrote that she had been “assigned some of the country’s highest profile cases” during her nearly 10 years at the department.
He added that she “consistently received the highest accolades from supervisors and peers alike.”
Comey described her exit in a memo to colleagues last year. She wrote that the department had “summarily fired via memo,” gave her no reason and left unclear who made the call.
She filed suit to challenge the firing. Her complaint cited “multiple provisions” of the Civil Service Reform Act, along with the First and Fifth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution.
Comey tied the dismissal to her father.
She said it was the “direct result” of President Donald Trump’s adversarial relationship with James Comey, whom Trump fired in 2017, well short of his 10-year term.
Her attorneys wrote in the complaint that “no plausible” outside explanation exists.
The complaint also pointed to Trump’s online activity.
It noted that the president had posted or re-posted more than 250 times about James Comey, including posts “repeatedly” calling him the “worst” FBI director in history.
The elder Comey is fighting his own legal battles. Since Trump began his second term, the Justice Department has filed two separate criminal cases against him.
The first alleged that he made false statements to Congress. A federal judge ordered it dismissed last year.
The second alleged that he threatened Trump through an Instagram photo of seashells arranged to show the numbers “86 47.”
James Comey has pleaded not guilty in that case. He has called both prosecutions “vindictive” and selective.
Monday’s ruling ends, for now, months of conflict between the Trump administration and the younger Comey.
