Catherine Hanaway
JEFFERSON CITY — Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey has announced he will resign next month to take a leadership position at the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Bailey
Bailey, a Republican who has served as attorney general for a little more than two-and-a-half years, will become co-deputy director of the FBI alongside Dan Bongino, part of a series of recent changes within the agency under Director Kash Patel.
Gov. Mike Kehoe announced that Catherine Hanaway, a former Missouri House speaker and U.S. attorney, will replace Bailey as the state’s 45th attorney general and the first woman to hold the position.
Bailey, who previously served as general counsel to Republican Gov. Mike Parson before being appointed attorney general in 2022, said in a statement that his decision reflects his commitment to public service.
“My life has been defined by a call to service, and I am once again answering that call, this time at the national level,” he said, according to the Associated Press.
His resignation continues a pattern of Missouri attorneys general moving on to federal roles. Both of his immediate predecessors, Eric Schmitt and Josh Hawley, left the office after being elected to the U.S. Senate, NPR in Kansas City reported.
Bailey, however, is leaving not for an elected office but for a federal appointment that will place him in a shared leadership position.
Gov. Kehoe praised Bailey’s service and said his federal appointment reflects Trump’s emphasis on “enforcing law and order,” KMBC reported.
“Although Missourians will miss Andrew’s strong leadership in the Attorney General’s Office, we know that he will serve Americans well at the FBI,” Kehoe said. Bailey, an Army veteran, won a full four-year term as attorney general in November after initially being appointed to replace Schmitt. Earlier this year, his office secured a $24.5 billion award against China for the COVID-19 pandemic in a case initiated by Schmitt.
Hanaway will be sworn in on September 8.
A graduate of Creighton University and the Catholic University of America Columbus School of Law, Hanaway previously served as the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri and as speaker of the Missouri House of Representatives.
She is currently a prosecutor in St. Louis and a partner at the Husch Blackwell law firm.
“It is a humbling honor to be selected for this role, and a duty I do not take lightly,” Hanaway said in a statement released by Kehoe’s office. “Attorney General Bailey has done an incredible job fighting for Missourians, and I am eager to get to work … to uphold the rule of law, protect the Constitution, and ensure a strong future for our state.”
Hanaway, who will also leave her post on the Washington University in St. Louis Board of Trustees, told Washington Univeristy’s Record she intends to protect Missourians “from anyone who would do violence against them, who would rip them off in financial schemes, who would abuse them by providing terrible care and getting paid by Medicaid and anyone who would try to invade their constitutional rights.”
Missouri House Democrats, through Minority Leader Ashley Aune, called Hanaway “a solid upgrade” over Bailey but questioned whether her leadership will lean toward her previous bipartisan reputation or her more partisan past supporting former Gov. Eric Greitens.
Hanaway has signaled she plans to run for a full term in 2028, and political analysts predict her leadership may mark a shift away from Bailey’s frequent national lawsuits toward more traditional functions of the attorney general’s office, according to NPR in Kansas City.
