United States Attorney General
head of the United States Department of Justice
The United States attorney general (AG) is the head of the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) and serves as the chief law enforcement officer of the federal government. The attorney general acts as the principal legal advisor to the president of the United States on all legal matters. The attorney general is also a statutory member of the Cabinet of the United States and a member of the United States National Security Council. Additionally, the attorney general is seventh in the presidential line of succession. The attorney general is the only cabinet department head who is not given the title Secretary.
Under the Appointments Clause of the United States Constitution, the officeholder is nominated by the president of the United States, and, following a confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, will take office if confirmed by the majority of the full United States Senate. The attorney general is supported by the Office of the Attorney General, which includes executive staff and several deputy attorneys general.
The attorney general is a Level I position in the Executive Schedule and thus earns the salary prescribed for that level: $250,600, as of January 2025.
Name
The title Attorney General is an example of a noun (attorney) followed by a postpositive adjective (general). "General" is a description of the type of attorney, not a title or rank in itself (as it would be in the military).
“United States Attorney General” enters the record as head of the United States Department of Justice. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what United, States and Attorney can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q636207. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2025.
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This entry incorporates text from “United States Attorney General” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.