The Trump administration said on Wednesday that the president had chosen Stanley Woodward Jr., who has defended several key figures in his orbit, for the No. 3 position at the Justice Department.
Since January, Mr. Woodward has served as a lawyer at the White House, a reflection of the trust he developed in President Trump’s inner circle during a tumultuous period in 2022 and 2023 when Mr. Trump faced multiple criminal investigations and prosecutions. He rose to prominence representing Mr. Trump’s personal aide in the investigation into his handling of classified documents after he left office.
If the Senate confirms him as associate attorney general, Mr. Woodward will oversee a number of important parts of the department, including civil litigation, civil rights, antitrust, tax and environmental work. Historically, the associate attorney general also plays a major role in formulating department policy and coordinating with the White House. He would also become the department’s chief officer overseeing lawsuits involving the Freedom of Information Act.
Mr. Woodward would join a department already dominated by senior officials who previously served as lawyers for Mr. Trump, including Attorney General Pam Bondi; the deputy attorney general, Todd Blanche; and the principal associate deputy attorney general, Emil Bove III. D. John Sauer, who represented Mr. Trump before the Supreme Court, is poised to become the solicitor general if confirmed on Thursday by the Senate.
Mr. Woodward has also represented senior aides to the president who came under investigation, as well as people charged in connection with the Jan. 6 attack on Congress.
But it was in the classified documents investigation that Mr. Woodward proved his value to the president. In representing Mr. Trump’s aide, Walt Nauta, Mr. Woodward often played a significant role in devising and executing defense strategy. Mr. Nauta first began working as a valet for Mr. Trump at the White House and stayed with him as a private employee when the president left office.
Prosecutors came to consider Mr. Nauta a critical figure in understanding how roughly 300 classified documents ended up stashed in dozens of boxes at Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s Florida estate.
At first, investigators tried to persuade Mr. Nauta to testify against his boss. That effort failed, and prosecutors charged Mr. Trump with violating a section of the Espionage Act. Mr. Nauta was charged alongside him with conspiring to obstruct the investigation.
As Mr. Nauta’s lawyer, Mr. Woodward proved a vexing adversary to prosecutors, who at one point suggested he had ethical conflicts by representing other witnesses in the case that might force him to stop representing Mr. Nauta.
Mr. Woodward remained and ultimately it was the charges that went away, thanks to a judge’s skepticism of the special counsel appointed to handle the case, and the presidential election that returned Mr. Trump to office.
In recent years, Mr. Woodward did a great deal of Trump-related legal work. He was often paid by the president’s political action committee to represent witnesses, including in the documents case and the other federal criminal case against Mr. Trump stemming from Jan. 6.
Those clients included Kash Patel, who is now Mr. Trump’s F.B.I. director.
Separately on Wednesday, the Senate is poised to vote on the nomination of Harmeet Dhillon to serve as the head of the Justice Department’s civil rights division.
