Because of President Trump's Executive Order, Administrative Law Judges (ALJs) will no longer be appointed through a process controlled by the federal Office of Personnel Management (OPM). Agency heads will be able to appoint the ALJs pretty much however they want to appoint them.
Social Security and other agencies would never appoint ALJs on political criteria, would they? We'll see but take a look at what happened with Immigration Judges during the George W. Bush Administriation. Of course, the Trump Administration is too high minded to do anything like that.
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The first wave of hires will probably be agency attorney managers. Mostly in their 30s, joined SSA out of law school and have never practiced law. Later on, you'd probably get Federalist Society alums in their late 20s auditioning for District Court seats, as the right continues to weaponize the federal judiciary.
Administrative appeals judges are already appointed that way. Although I think "diversity"efforts are a big factor. But being friends and doing a detail with the director is the biggest factor. Of course actual legal thinking and reasoning is more of an after thought. Right now though ssa still has all of the Obama leftovers who burrowed in and no signs of that changing anytime soon as no efforts to confirm the commissioner nominee. So I bet saw agency heads will shouldn't alj s the same way as aajs. As a side note I don't know any ssa alj who later became a federal district judge. If anyone hopes to use it as a stepping still they'd soon learn sad aljs have few transferable skills. And little respect outside of ssa.
Hopefully they will get rid of the huge preference opm gives to vets. Some JAG attorney who only saw a gun for a few weeks during officer school and spent all his time making sure a financial contract has commas in the right place doesn't need preference and it belittles the real risk the people who were pulling a trigger were put in.
"But wait, there's more!"
https://www.cnn.com/2018/08/07/politics/immigration-judge-replaced-deportation-case-justice-department/
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