NSA installs DHS lawyer as new general counsel

The National Security Agency recently appointed a new top lawyer, discreetly filling a role that has become a lightning rod for conservative critics in recent years.

Kerianne Tobitsch, who most recently served as a senior lawyer at the Homeland Security Department, was named the spy agency’s general counsel in June, according to two people with direct knowledge of the move. 

Prior to joining DHS in April 2025, Tobitsch worked for more than eight years at the New York City office of law firm Jones Day, where she became a partner, according to her LinkedIn profile.

An NSA spokesperson confirmed her appointment after publication of this story.

“NSA confirms that Kerianne Tobitsch began her appointment as NSA’s General Counsel on June 15, 2026,” they said in a statement to Recorded Future News.

Among a broad range of legal tasks, the general counsel oversees the lawyers who regularly review or greenlight clandestine operations.

The electronic eavesdropping agency had been without a general counsel for roughly a year. April Falcon Doss, who was named to the post in 2022 during the Biden administration, was fired after the Daily Wire, a conservative web site, wrote about her and her work as a former Democratic staffer for the Senate Intelligence Committee.

The story went viral on social media and was amplified by Laura Loomer, a far-right conspiracy theorist, who previously claimed credit for the Trump administration ousting U.S. Cyber Command and NSA chief Gen. Timothy Haugh and his civilian deputy, Wendy Noble, over what she claimed was disloyalty to the White House.

Two other senior NSA lawyers voluntarily retired around the time Doss was fired. Those jobs were subsequently filled on an acting basis. The NSA spokesperson declined to comment on if either post had been permanently refilled. 

The series of high-level departures created anxiety within the command and the agency, though officials feel more at ease with the installation of a new commander and recent appointments to other top personnel roles.

Prior to joining DHS, Tobitsch was a contributor to JD Supra, an online legal publication, where she and her Jones Day colleagues commented on a range of emerging privacy and data security issues. 

She is also likely to play a role when policymakers return from summer recess and attempt to renew Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). The statute, which sunset In June, allows the NSA to collect from American companies like Google and AT&T the electronic messages of targeted foreigners abroad without a warrant.

The general counsel is a career civil servant position at the NSA and is meant to remain apolitical. However, in the final days of the first Trump presidency, Michael Ellis, an administration loyalist, was appointed to the role. 

Congressional Democrats decried the move as an attempt to "burrow," or convert a political appointee into a career position, at the country's largest spy agency. Ellis was placed on leave at the beginning of the Biden administration before he ultimately resigned. 

The episode sparked an inspector general probe that found the Trump administration had not improperly pressured the Defense Department to appoint Ellis, who is now CIA deputy director.

Editor’s Note: Story updated 4:35 p.m. Eastern time with comments from the NSA.