James M. McDonald, picked for U.S. attorney for New York’s Southern District, would succeed Jay Clayton, whom the president named director of national intelligence.
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President Donald Trump said Saturday that he intends to nominate James M. McDonald, a former federal prosecutor who later served on Trump’s criminal defense team, to succeed Jay Clayton as the U.S. attorney for the powerful Southern District of New York.
“I am pleased to announce my intent to appoint James M. McDonald as the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “I am confident that Jamie will deliver strong results … as he has the respect of, and will work fantastically with, our Law Enforcement Patriots, the Legal Community, and the Judicial Bench.”
McDonald’s prospective nomination to the high-profile prosecutorial role — which would require Senate confirmation — follows Trump’s decision this week to nominate Clayton to serve as the next director of national intelligence. If confirmed, McDonald will lead an office that has jurisdiction over Wall Street, giving it broad influence over global finance.
At the law firm Sullivan & Cromwell, McDonald has handled a range of cases touching on regulatory enforcement, antitrust, cryptocurrency, prediction markets and other legal issues. In 2025, he was named as part of the Sullivan & Cromwell legal team that appealed Trump’s 2024 criminal conviction on 34 counts of falsifying business records to conceal a hush money payment to an adult-film actress.
The selection of McDonald continues Trump’s pattern of appointing members of his personal legal team to high-powered government jobs. Todd Blanche, who represented Trump in his 2024 New York trial in the hush money case, has been tapped to serve as U.S. attorney general. Trump has also chosen his past lawyers Emil Bove and Matthew Schwartz to serve as federal judges, and sought to install his attorney Lindsey Halligan as the top prosecutor for the Eastern District of Virginia.
McDonald also served as director of enforcement at the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission during Trump’s first term and worked as an assistant U.S. attorney in the Southern District of New York. He previously worked as a lawyer in President George W. Bush’s White House and clerked for Supreme Court Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.
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Blanche congratulated McDonald on his appointment on social media.
“I thank Jay Clayton for his leadership of the Office and look forward to his continued service as Director of National Intelligence. We look forward to working with the judges as part of this process,” Blanche wrote.
McDonald also has been championed by Clayton, his former colleague at Sullivan & Cromwell.
“Jamie’s career has been nothing but meteoric,” Clayton said on an October 2024 podcast with McDonald, calling attention to skills that he said differentiated McDonald from other lawyers. “I think identifying where things are going, or where they can go, and how to shape the situation to get them to that best endpoint, that’s the real skill, and I’ve seen that in you.”
On the podcast, McDonald said that one of the emerging legal issues he was considering was the rise of artificial intelligence and automation, and how officials enforced the law when algorithms produced outcomes that they didn’t like.
“There are new issues and risks that are presenting themselves,” he told Clayton.
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