Jesus Osete Takes Over for Harmeet Dhillon, but a Federal Judgeship Could Make His Tenure Brief
Jesus A. Osete is now running the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. The division’s homepage lists him as Acting Assistant Attorney General after Harmeet K. Dhillon resigned on November 5, 2026. For gun owners, that matters because Osete was already named as Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General on the United States’ captions in the division’s affirmative Second Amendment cases. It also matters because he is a pending nominee to a Missouri federal judgeship whose seat does not open until May 2027. No firm date has been set for him to leave Civil Rights.
Attorney General Todd Blanche said he accepted Dhillon’s resignation on November 5. Fox News reported that Dhillon told White House chief of staff Susie Wiles weeks before Election Day that she planned to leave, and that Wiles asked her to wait until after the midterms. Dhillon said she was not pushed out. Osete had been her principal deputy since August 7, 2025, when Dhillon swore him into that job.
His Role in the Gun-Rights Cases
Osete’s name appears as Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General on several of the division’s Second Amendment complaints. He served in a supervisory role on the United States’ legal team, giving him experience with the gun-rights litigation he now inherits as acting head.
The first of those filings came on September 30, 2025. The United States sued the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department over delays in issuing concealed-carry permits. DOJ called it the first affirmative lawsuit the department had ever filed in support of gun owners. Osete is listed on that complaint. He is also listed on the July 1, 2026 suits against Virginia and California, and on the December 2025 case against the District of Columbia over semi-automatic registration rules.
According to the Los Angeles complaint, the department received 3,982 new applications between January 2024 and March 2025 but approved only two. DOJ alleged that applicants faced delays that made the right to carry meaningless in practice. That case illustrates the division’s approach under Dhillon: challenge how a law-enforcement agency administers a permitting system, even when the obstacle is prolonged delay rather than an explicit refusal to issue permits. Osete was part of that effort before becoming acting head.
The Virginia case challenges SB 749, the 2026 law that bans importing, selling, manufacturing, purchasing, or transferring what the statute calls “assault firearms,” including AR-15-style rifles. The California case challenges Penal Code § 27595, which DOJ calls a ban on selling most Glock and Glock-style pistols, along with the Unsafe Handgun Act roster rules in Penal Code §§ 31910 and 32015.
Those filings rest on the theory the division’s Second Amendment Section still advertises: investigate law-enforcement pattern-or-practice violations of the right to keep and bear arms, and bring affirmative civil actions under 34 U.S.C. § 12601. Acting Chief Barry Arrington remains listed on the section’s page. What changed this week is who sits above him.
The Virginia complaint is a fair sample of the rhetoric Osete’s shop put in court. It says the term “assault weapon” (and derivatives of that term) “is a rhetorically charged political term developed by anti-gun publicists,” and that in the real world the rifles SB 749 calls “assault firearms” include “ordinary semiautomatic rifles lawfully possessed and used by millions of law-abiding Americans.” That language is the United States speaking in a pleading. Filing a case is not winning it. Several of those suits remain pending, which means the division’s Second Amendment work is still an active docket under the new acting head.
Missouri Background
According to Ballotpedia, which cites his Senate Judiciary questionnaire, Osete was born in Hermosillo, Mexico, in 1991, earned his undergraduate degree from the University of Arizona in 2013, and took his J.D. from Washington University in St. Louis in 2016. He clerked for Missouri Supreme Court Chief Justice Zel M. Fischer and Eighth Circuit Judge Bobby E. Shepherd. At the Missouri Attorney General’s Office, he served as a deputy attorney general.
On January 7, 2022, the Supreme Court docket shows he presented oral argument for the respondents in Biden v. Missouri, the COVID-era healthcare worker vaccine-mandate application. He later worked as general counsel to Missouri Secretary of State John R. Ashcroft before returning to private practice and joining DOJ. His questionnaire listed Alexandria, Virginia, as his residence while he worked at Main Justice, which means the United States sued Virginia over a sales ban that applies where he lives, with his name on the supervisory line.
Pending Nomination, No Departure Date Set
Trump announced his intent to nominate Osete to the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri on August 20, 2026. The White House sent the nomination to the Senate on September 14. According to the federal judiciary’s future vacancies list, updated November 9, 2026, Judge David Gregory Kays takes senior status on May 11, 2027, and Osete is the nominee for that seat.
The Senate Judiciary Committee held his hearing on September 30, 2026. Congress.gov and the committee’s nominations page still show the last action as “Hearings held.” As of November 9, there is no committee report and no floor confirmation. The nomination timing does not by itself guarantee a short tenure at Civil Rights. Even a confirmation would not open the Western District seat until May 11, 2027. DOJ has not published a date for Osete to leave the acting job, and the Civil Rights homepage does not say how long the acting designation is meant to last.
For gun owners, the immediate fact is simpler. Dhillon stood up the Second Amendment Section and used it to sue over permit delays, state rifle bans, and registration schemes. Osete was listed as her principal deputy on those captions and now serves as acting head of the division that houses the section. His nomination offers a reason to expect another leadership change if the Senate confirms him, but it does not establish when he will leave DOJ. As of November 9, the Senate tracker records a hearing, not confirmation, and Kays’ seat is scheduled to become vacant on May 11, 2027.
About John Crump
Mr. Crump is an NRA instructor and constitutional activist with more than 26 years of experience in networking and cybersecurity for major Fortune 100 companies. John has written about firearms, the Constitution, and cybersecurity, and has interviewed people from all walks of life. John lives in Northern Virginia with his wife and sons. Follow him on X at @right2bear, or at www.crumpy.com.