OJP FY 2026 Special Attorneys Program Round 4
This program funds state, local, Tribal, and territorial prosecuting agencies to hire or assign prosecutors who will be cross-designated as Special Attorneys or SAUSAs to investigate and prosecute specified fraud, trafficking, and related criminal cases under federal coordination.
RESTRICTED TO: STATE LOCAL GOV · TRIBAL ENTITIES
⚑ Applicant pool is limited to prosecuting agencies in state, local, Tribal, and territorial government; universities are not eligible. · Cooperative agreement supports personnel to perform prosecution work, not research. · Program is explicitly for cross-designated prosecutors working under federal authorities on a case-by-case basis.
Unit fits — one characterization, each unit's own rules
| IPPRA | 15 none | university cannot apply directly (ineligible) |
| Physical Sciences & Engineering (demo) | 15 none | university cannot apply directly (ineligible) |
| Tom Love Innovation Hub | 0 none | no commercialization signal |
Description
This is a notice of funding opportunity (NOFO) for the OJP FY 2026 Special Attorneys Program. This program will support state, local, Tribal, and territorial prosecuting agencies to assign or hire qualified prosecutors to serve full-time or part-time (on a case-by-case basis) as Special Attorneys under the direction of the National Fraud Enforcement Division or the Criminal Division, or to serve as Special Assistant United States Attorneys (SAUSAs) within a United States Attorney’s Office. These “cross-designated” prosecutors will remain employees of their home agencies but will investigate and prosecute assigned fraud and other crimes committed by aliens within the United States (hereafter referred to as “criminal aliens”) for the duration of their appointment under this program. Cross-designated prosecutors may also be assigned cases involving drug or human trafficking committed within the United States. The National Fraud Enforcement Division, Criminal Division, and United States Attorney’s Offices will coordinate with selected prosecutor offices on a case-by-case basis to address logistics and any unique local circumstances. This grant program, authorized under Public Law 119-21, Title X, Subtitle A, Part II, Section 100055 (codified at 34 U.S.C. § 61101), is intended to strengthen investigative and prosecutorial capacity, expand intergovernmental coordination, and enhance the ability of jurisdictions to investigate and prosecute fraud and other crimes committed by aliens within the United States, as well as investigate and prosecute drug and human trafficking crimes. The program is also intended to increase the availability of cross-designated prosecutorial personnel who can pursue these matters in coordination with federal authorities and contribute to the effective enforcement of applicable criminal laws.
Eligibility
For the purposes of this NOFO, other units of local government include towns, boroughs, parishes, villages, or other general purpose political subdivisions of a state.
Apply
View on Grants.gov → CONTACT: Bureau of Justice Assistance <OJP.ResponseCenter@usdoj.gov>
Proposal brief SEE AN EXAMPLE →
A one-page internal memo: fit assessment, submission requirements, document scaffold, and next steps dated back from the deadline — tailored to your project idea if you add one.
Proposal shell · Federal (generic) conventions SEE A FEDERAL EXAMPLE →
Funder-faithful document skeletons — Federal (generic)'s document set with section headings, page limits, reviewer guidance, and writing prompts; add a project idea to get [DRAFT] starter bullets. Download as .md for Word or Overleaf.
Legacy IPPRA LLM assessment (v2.0, for comparison)
0/100 · gpt-5.4-mini · 2026-07-06
This is a prosecutorial capacity-building and law-enforcement operations program, not a research, evaluation, survey, or data-infrastructure opportunity. Although it touches fraud, trafficking, and criminal enforcement, it does not present a meaningful social-science, policy, or behavioral research component that IPPRA could lead, and the eligible applicants are government prosecuting agencies rather than public research institutions.
Legacy scoring history
| 2026-07-06 | 0 | gpt-5.4-mini | This is a prosecutorial capacity-building and law-enforcement operations program, not a research, evaluation, survey, or data-infrastructure opportunity. Although it touches fraud, trafficking, and criminal enforcement, it does not present a meaningful social-science, policy, or behavioral research component that IPPRA could lead, and the eligible applicants are government prosecuting agencies rather than public research institutions. |
| 2026-07-06 | 10 | gpt-5.4-mini | This is primarily a criminal justice/prosecution capacity grant for state, local, Tribal, and territorial prosecuting agencies, with no research, survey, policy-analysis, or community-behavior component that IPPRA would typically lead. The only tenuous alignment is with national security-adjacent concerns like cross-border crime and trafficking, but the opportunity is not a fit for a public research university as a direct applicant or meaningful partner, so the relevance is very low. |