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A federal judge upended the leadership of New Jersey’s U.S. attorney’s office again Monday, ruling for the second time in less than a year that the Trump administration had illegally sought to bypass Congress and install its own picks to head the prominent prosecutorial outpost.

U.S. District Judge Matthew Brann said that a trio of Justice Department lawyers who have been leading the office since late last year had been unlawfully serving in their positions. Attorney General Pam Bondi appointed them after Brann disqualified Alina Habba, President Donald Trump’s previous choice for U.S. attorney in the state, in August amid similar questions over the legality of her appointment.

“One year into this administration, it is plain that President Trump and his top aides have chafed at the limits of their power set forth by the law and the Constitution,” Brann wrote, though he immediately stayed his ruling, allowing the administration a chance to appeal.

Still, his sternly worded 130-page opinion ended with a warning to the government that if it chose to leave that triumvirate in place, “it does so at its own risk.” He added that any further attempts to illegally appoint new leadership to the office would “result in dismissals of pending cases.”.....

Across the country, courts have disqualified a half-dozen of Trump’s picks to lead U.S. attorney’s offices on an interim or acting basis, finding that each had served well beyond the statutorily defined limits of their temporary appointments or were never legally appointed in the first place.

In New Jersey, Virginia and New York, federal judges have named their own replacements only for the Justice Department to swiftly fire those picks — in some cases via social media posts, which Brann described as unnecessarily “combative.”