Government attorney salary 2026: the public table.

IRS Office of Chief Counsel does not start Honors lawyers at step 1. IRM 30.4.1.3.1.2, dated 1 February 2007 and still the live text on 30 September 2026, hires a J.D. at GS-11 Step 8 and a Tax or Labor LL.M. at GS-12 Step 4. Applied to Salary Table 2026-NY those steps are $108,545 and $116,030. Applied to Rest of U.S. they are $92,107 and $98,459. Those dollars are products of two official instruments, not a third published Counsel schedule, and they are labeled as such.

Executive Schedule 2026, on Salary Table 2026-EX, is the clip above the GS-15 cell: EX-IV $197,200; EX-III $209,600; EX-II $228,000; EX-I $253,100. OPM’s January 2026 pay-adjustments memo (CPM 2025-18) sets the SES minimum at $151,661, a certified SES maximum at EX-II, $228,000, and an uncertified maximum at EX-III, $209,600. The same memo sets the aggregate limitation on pay for calendar 2026 at $253,100, and the higher cap for certified SES and SL-ST at the Vice President’s salary, $292,300. ALJ AL-1 is $197,200. A political-appointee payable-rate freeze continued through 30 January 2026 under Public Law 119-37. OPM’s Guide For Federal Attorney Recruiting and Hiring places series 0905 on Schedule A, 5 CFR 213.3102(d): a J.D. and an active bar of any U.S. jurisdiction, with the duty station not required to match the bar.

A 7 July 2025 Presidential Memorandum extended the freeze through 15 October 2025. The 15 October 2025 Executive Order then replaced it with Strategic Hiring Committees and Annual Staffing Plans, citing the 4-to-1 departure-to-hire ratio in Executive Order 14210 as already exceeded. Through 2026, career 0905 hiring is a staffing-plan product. Exempt seats — AUSA immigration and border, FBI Office of General Counsel, EOIR — move faster. The Department of Justice FY 2026 request reallocates attorney FTE toward that carve-out: U.S. Attorneys +47 positions / +24 FTE / +$6.149 million for Immigration and Border-Related Prosecutions, offset by a $9.6 million “Reprioritization of Criminal and Civil Litigation.” Civil Division: 1,295 positions / 1,002 attorneys, 129 attorneys below FY 2025 enacted, including Tax Division consolidation into Civil (minus 67 attorneys in the CIV write-up). Criminal Division: minus 51 attorneys. Energy and Natural Resources Division: minus 79 attorneys. FY 2026 enacted for U.S. Attorneys, from the FY 2027 exhibits: 10,532 positions / 9,544 FTE / $2,621,000,000.

EOIR adjudication statistics generated 24 July 2026 show FY 2025 receipts of 562,375 against completions of 798,808, and FY 2026 through the third quarter receipts of 391,145 against completions of 660,343. The FY 2026 EOIR exhibits record a pending caseload drop of 5.1 percent in FY 2025, the first since FY 2006, and an immigration-judge corps of 557 in FY 2026 Q1 against 634 in FY 2025. Honors 2026–27, on the participating-components page updated 25 August 2026, still estimates 32 EOIR hires. That is an immigration-carve-out attorney seat, not a reconstitution of the Civil or ENRD FTE that the request cut.

Two 2024 holdings sit on the trial-attorney side of the same year. SEC v. Jarkesy, 27 June 2024, requires a Seventh Amendment jury in an Article III court when the SEC seeks civil penalties for securities fraud that replicate common-law fraud; in-house ALJ adjudication of that penalty action is unconstitutional. Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, 28 June 2024, overrules Chevron: the APA requires courts to exercise independent judgment on statutory authority. Neither holding is a pay raise. Both are a Federal Programs, agency-OGC and Enforcement-trial demand. The ALJ AL-1 cell at $197,200 is not the growth seat on this docket. SEC FY 2025 enforcement results, announced 7 April 2026, record 456 actions, of which 303 were standalone, and 1,095 matters investigated and closed without an action. Crypto registration cases were dismissed beginning February 2025. The remaining program is fraud, manipulation, adviser fiduciary duty, and individual charges — Article III trial work, not policy-by-enforcement.

Independent financial regulators hire 0905 lawyers onto agency desks, not GS. FTC Bureau of Competition, page updated 2 September 2026, is the antitrust-enforcement buyer at that commission; its attorney-hiring page was listing laterals in Mergers, Anticompetitive Practices, Health Care, Technology Enforcement, the American Competition Enforcement Division in Dallas and Seattle, and senior litigators for the Litigation Group. The HSR form expanded on 10 February 2025, was vacated on 12 February 2026, and the Fifth Circuit denied a stay on 19 March 2026; a joint FTC/DOJ request for information followed on 25 March 2026. Vacatur reduces document-load on the filing side. It does not close the merger desk, and it is not this page’s thesis. IRS Office of Chief Counsel, under IRM 1.1.6, is a tax-controversy employer with Associate and Division Counsel offices covering Corporate, Financial Institutions, International, Criminal Tax, Procedure and Administration, and the operating divisions. Federal defender organizations are the Sixth Amendment counterpart to U.S. Attorneys’ Offices: 83 authorized organizations serving 92 of 94 districts, taking about 60 percent of CJA appointments against a 40 percent panel share, with CJA panel rates effective 1 January 2026 at $177 an hour non-capital and $226 an hour capital. Chambers law clerks sit on the Judiciary Salary Plan, JSP-11 through JSP-14; staff attorneys CL-27 through CL-31. NALP’s Class of 2025 National Summary Report, August 2026, puts the federal clerkship median at $77,318 on 959 reported salaries. That is not the all-clerkship median, which the same table puts at $72,533.

The New York City Law Department’s 2025 Annual Report records offices in all five boroughs and Kingston, New York, and more than 70,000 active or ongoing legal matters each year, with Tort taking more than 7,000 new suits a year. Legal divisions named in that report include Administrative Law and Regulatory Litigation, Affirmative Litigation, Appeals, Commercial and Real Estate Litigation, Environmental Law, Labor and Employment Law, Municipal Finance, Special Federal Litigation, Tax and Bankruptcy Litigation, and Tort. The New York State Attorney General is a different employer type: over 1,700 staff and over 700 assistant attorneys general, in Criminal Justice, Economic Justice (including Antitrust and Investor Protection), Social Justice, Solicitor General, and State Counsel. Bureau of Justice Statistics, Prosecutors in State Courts, 2020, published 14 November 2024, still measures the county prosecutor bench at 2,347 offices and 35,120 attorneys, 33,500 of them full-time, with offices serving a million or more residents employing nearly 12,000. No later Prosecutors in State Courts report was posted as of 30 September 2026. A 2025 Census of Prosecutor Offices was in OMB reinstatement in 2026; it is not a published wage table. Public Service Loan Forgiveness remains a retention hook on the municipal and state seats: 120 qualifying payments in a public-service job. A 31 October 2025 Education Department rule adding a “substantial illegal purpose” employer disqualification was vacated on 30 June 2026; government employment remains a qualifying employer under the standing rule.

The private desks that buy this bench, documented by 2025–26 firm announcements with lawyer names omitted, are Antitrust and Competition, White Collar and Investigations, Securities Enforcement, Tax Controversy, and Government and Regulatory Litigation, typically at Am Law or global firms. An Am Law global firm in Washington announced a partner seat in Antitrust and Competition on 12 January 2026 for a former Director of Civil Enforcement of DOJ Antitrust. An Am Law international firm in New York announced a Business Litigation partner seat on 9 June 2026 for a former Chief of DOJ Antitrust’s Washington Criminal Section. Parallel 2025–26 releases placed former SEC Enforcement regional leadership into Investigations and White-Collar Defense. Those are the private desks that price against the GS, AD and SK cap, not against NALP’s $81,000 government-graduate median. The company desks that buy the same bench are a general counsel’s direct reports: deputy general counsel for investigations, head of antitrust, chief compliance officer (lawyer), head of regulatory, tax controversy counsel, at banks, broker-dealers, investment advisers, public issuers, healthcare systems, defense and industrials, and technology platforms. NALP Class of 2025 business jobs were 2,180, 6.7 percent of employed graduates, the lowest share since the Class of 1989 — an entry-level figure, not an experienced-government-lateral series. NALP does not publish a 2026 in-house-from-government wage table; it is omitted rather than invented.