Mark L. Wolf, Senior Judge of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts, who was appointed to the federal bench by President Ronald Reagan in 1985, resigned on Friday.
In his op-ed in The Atlantic, ‘Why I Resigned,’ Wolf said he “looked forward to serving for the rest of my life,” but can “no longer bear to be restrained by what judges can say publicly or do outside the courtroom.”
The former Department of Justice attorney accused President Trump of “using the law for partisan purposes” and wrote: “The White House’s assault on the rule of law is so deeply disturbing to me that I feel compelled to speak out. Silence, for me, is now intolerable.”
BREAKING: Mark Wolf, appointed to the federal bench by Ronald Reagan, writes that he is resigning as a judge to have the freedom to speak out against the president’s assault on the rule of law pic.twitter.com/m3M5JTWmUh
— Yoni Appelbaum (@YAppelbaum) November 9, 2025
In 2016, Judge Wolf co-founded Integrity Initiatives International which is dedicated to “strengthening the enforcement of criminal laws in order to punish and deter leaders who are corrupt and regularly violate human rights.”
The NGO is “the leading advocate for the creation of an International Anti-Corruption Court to hold the most rapacious kleptocrats and their co-conspirators accountable when their national governments are unable or unwilling to do so.”
— Yoni Appelbaum (@YAppelbaum) November 9, 2025
Wolf noted that his resignation will not give President Trump the opportunity to fill his seat; Wolf’s successor, Senior Judge Patti B. Saris, was appointed when he became a senior judge in 2013. (Saris, a fellow Harvard Law School graduate, was nominated as a U.S. District Judge of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts by President Bill Clinton in 1993.)
[NOTE: Integrity Initiatives International seeks to establish an International Anti-Corruption Court (IACC) for the prosecution of “Grand Corruption – the abuse of public office for private gain by a nation’s leaders” by kleptocrats who elude prosecution in their own countries. In 2022, more than 40 former presidents and prime ministers from over 80 countries signed a declaration in support of establishing the IACC.]