U.S. Department of Justice building in Washington, D.C. Photo Credit: Diego M. Radzinschi/ALM

A life-long career servant at the Justice Department's Civil Division is leaving his post, joining the steady trickle of veteran lawyers who have left Main Justice in the last year.

Matthew Collette, who currently serves as the deputy director of the Civil Division appellate staff, will leave the Justice Department this month. A 30-year veteran, he leaves behind a senior role in the DOJ's civil appellate team, responsible for defending U.S. agencies and policies in civil litigation before the federal courts of appeals.

Matthew Collette.

“I am proud of my 30 years of service at the Department of Justice. It is a great privilege and an awesome responsibility to stand up in court and say, 'I represent the United States,'” Collette said in a statement to The National Law Journal.

“It is hard to leave, but I am confident that the attorneys I leave behind will continue to represent the United States with the professionalism and dignity that has always defined what it means to be a Department of Justice lawyer.”

Where Collette goes next is unclear. In a LinkedIn post announcing his exit earlier this month, he wrote: “I am looking forward to finding something new and exciting where I can continue to use my skills as a litigator and/or manager.”

As is standard, Collette withdrew his appearance this week from cases where he has represented the United States, including the dispute over the Washington-region public metro's refusal to place religious-themed advertisements on buses and subways. The case, where the U.S. is an amicus, is currently at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, with the appeals court expected to rule on a request for en banc review.

He was also part of the appellate team representing the U.S., as an amicus curiae, in a Sixth Circuit case involving conditions on funding for Planned Parenthood in Ohio. Collette withdrew his appearance from that case in a Wednesday filing.

Collette began at the Justice Department in October 1988, joining out of law school at the University of Southern California. While he spent the next 20 years of his career at the Civil Division, he served a brief stint as senior counsel to the associate attorney general between March 2011 and May 2012. Thomas Perrelli, now a partner at Jenner & Block, was the associate attorney general, the No. 3 official at the DOJ at the time.

His exit marks the latest departure from Main Justice, and comes at a precarious and uncertain time for the department. Both the DOJ and FBI have been at the center of much of President Donald Trump's ire and aspersions, and attorneys in Washington, D.C., have described morale under Attorney General Jeff Sessions' DOJ as low.

Collette follows another senior attorney's exit from the DOJ's civil appellate staff: Douglas Letter, who was director of the civil appeals team, left his job in January for Georgetown Law's Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection.

In one resignation that picked up national attention, Joel McElvain resigned from his job in the division's Federal Programs Branch after the Justice Department made the controversial decision to drop its defense of a central provision of the Affordable Care Act. McElvain, who was assistant branch director of the Federal Programs Branch, had served at the Justice Department for around 20 years.

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