New Delhi, July 25 -- SEATTLE - Roger Rogoff had been on the job for 54 minutes when Washington came calling.

He had been sworn in just over an hour earlier, appointed by a panel of federal district judges who had waited months for the Trump administration to nominate a permanent U.S. attorney for the Western District of Washington. The administration had not. Under federal statute, when a Senate-confirmed U.S. attorney is absent, district courts may appoint one in their place. The judges chose Rogoff, a former King County Superior Court judge with three decades in the law. He was, in all legal respects, the chief federal prosecutor for the district.

Then Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche fired him.

The dismissal came 54 minutes aft...