Aaron Reitz, a former Trump administration official and top lawyer for the Texas attorney general, has been selected as the next U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Texas, according to a Bloomberg Law report published late Tuesday night.
According to the report, Reitz would replace Acting U.S. Attorney John Marck, who was confirmed on June 24 as a federal judge in McAllen.
President Donald Trump previously nominated Reitz to lead the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Policy. He was confirmed by the Senate in March 2025.
Reitz, 39, left the office in June 2025 to run for Texas attorney general. Despite receiving Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s endorsement, he finished last among four candidates in the March Republican primary.
At the time, he told The Texas Lawbook, “I consider Ken Paxton a mentor and a friend. He was my boss for many years, and if Texas voters like the way he has led on legal issues over the past decade, they’re going to get more of that with me.”
Reitz previously served as Paxton’s deputy attorney general for legal strategy, and prior to that, as chief of staff to U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz. In his role with Paxton, Reitz said he served as the “offensive coordinator” overseeing Texas’ legal pushback, including 46 lawsuits against the Biden administration.
“My charge was the legal initiatives, opinions, and appeals that had a particularly significant impact on the state and the nation,” he told The Lawbook last year.
While deputy attorney general, Reitz said he had about an 85 percent win rate in challenges to executive orders and proclamations issued by the Biden administration.
His campaign website said he also worked on Paxton’s failed bid to challenge President Trump’s 2020 presidential election loss before the U.S. Supreme Court.
“I am someone who can be trusted with the keys to this vehicle and will continue to fight aggressively for the Constitution, for law, order, justice, and Texas’ prerogatives as well as Texans’ rights,” Reitz told The Lawbook when asked during his attorney general campaign about his philosophy. Reitz also said he has benefited from the guidance of Paxton, Ted Cruz, former U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi and others.
“I’ve been privileged to have served under some tremendous leaders, and it has shaped me as a man, lawyer, and manager,” he said. “… I’d like to think the collective effect of my exposure to some of our state’s and nation’s greatest fighters for law, order, justice, and the Constitution has shaped me into the kind of Attorney General I will be in the future.”
A graduate of Texas A&M and the University of Texas School of Law, Reitz served five years in the U.S. Marine Corps and deployed to Afghanistan. He has remained a major in the Marine Corps Reserve.
Reitz’s campaign website states that he “has stood in the trenches with the toughest conservatives and taken the incoming fire for us.”
After law school, he worked as an associate at Bracewell in Houston and then clerked for Texas Supreme Court Justice Jimmy Blacklock.
In 2020, Reitz ran unsuccessfully for the Texas House of Representatives. He is a partner at Hance Scarborough in Austin.
The United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Texas is among the busiest in the nation, with more than 200 attorneys. It serves more than nine million people in 43 counties, with offices in Houston, Galveston, Corpus Christi, Laredo, McAllen and Brownsville.
Records show the Southern District, which covers a wide swath of the Texas-Mexico border, has been one of the busiest offices. The majority of cases – nearly 70 percent – were immigration-related. In fiscal 2025, of the 7,545 individuals sentenced, 5,273 were for immigration offenses, according to federal sentencing data.
There has been no formal announcement or comment by the Justice Department on Reitz’s selection. Bloomberg also reported that the district’s judges voted to appoint Reitz, which would allow him to serve without Senate confirmation, citing an unnamed person familiar with the matter.