Dawn Johnsen

Dawn Elizabeth Johnsen (born August 14, 1961) is an American lawyer and the Walter W. Foskett Professor of Constitutional law, on the faculty at Maurer School of Law at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana. She previously served in the Biden administration as Acting Attorney General at the Office of Legal Counsel, having been appointed on January 20, 2021, by President Joe Biden, to return to the role she previously held in the Clinton administration.^[1] She was succeeded in that role in a permanent capacity by Christopher H. Schroeder, and is currently serving as the Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the same office.

Johnsen worked at the Office of Legal Counsel in the United States Department of Justice from 1993 to 1998 and served as acting Assistant Attorney General from 1997 to 1998; she was twice nominated to the post in the Obama administration.^[2][3][4] Johnsen's first nomination was approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee in March 2009 in a party line vote, but was not acted on by the full Senate before it recessed at the end of 2009.^[5] Obama then renominated her to the post on January 20, 2010, but on April 9, 2010, Johnsen withdrew her name from consideration.^[5][6]