Kathleen O'Malley spent nearly three decades as a federal judge and knows what it feels like when the U.S. Marshals and FBI come calling with warnings about threats of harm. A jailhouse informant once revealed that another inmate was plotting to have her killed.

O'Malley, who returned to private practice in 2022 after 16 years as a district judge in Ohio and 12 years on the U.S. Court of Appeals, told me she always knew during her time on the bench that the U.S. Department of Justice "had my back" when threats came up.

She felt a shift during President Donald Trump's first administration, a confluence of his aggressive attacks on judges who made him follow the law and the amplifying impact of his criticism through social media. The point of all that, O'Malley told me, is to intimidate judges, to prevent them from ruling against a president willing to target them just for doing their jobs.

O'Malley, who once sat on a judicial committee tasked with making courthouses safe and secure, spoke to me this week because I am tracking an effort to increase funding for federal judicial security. That push comes after funding has been flat in the past two federal fiscal years, despite a growing number of threats against judges.

The call for more funding has drawn predictable pushback from some Republicans in the U.S. House, including some who have vilified judges for holding Trump accountable when he was out of office and for

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