Jeff Sessions Biography

Jeff Sessions is the Alabama Republican who was first elected to the United States Senate in 1996. He became Attorney General of the United States in 2017 and resigned at President Donald Trump‘s request nine months later, in 2018.

Born and raised in Alabama, Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III got his undergraduate and law degrees in Alabama: from Huntingdon College (1969) and the University of Alabama School of Law (1973). He began his legal career in Alabama in 1974.

After only five years as an assistant U.S. Attorney, Sessions was President Ronald Reagan‘s choice to become Alabama’s U.S. Attorney, and a few years later he was Reagan’s nominee for a position as a federal judge — when Sessions was just 39 years old.

The Senate rejected Sessions’ appointment as a judge in 1986, after former colleagues testified that he was a racist. Similar doubts expressed by liberals only helped cement Sessions’ reputation as a conservative back home in Alabama. He was elected Alabama’s Attorney General in 1994, and two years later he was elected to the U.S. Senate. He was re-elected in 2002, 2008 and 2014.

He became an early supporter when Donald Trump ran for the presidency in 2016, advising the candidate on immigration issues. After Trump won the election, he named Sessions as his choice for U.S. Attorney General. This time the Senate confirmed Sessions, and he succeeded Loretta Lynch as Attorney General in February of 2017.

Early in the Trump administration, Sessions recused himself from a federal investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election. Throughout his tenure, President Trump publicly ridiculed and criticized his own attorney general as the investigation continued with indictments and convictions.

On November 7, 2018, one day after the midterm elections, Jeff Sessions offered his resignation at the president’s request.