President Donald Trump's fraught effort to install political appointees in permanent roles as US attorneys across the country gained momentum this week, as Republicans work to jumpstart a stalled confirmation process in the Senate, while the White House resorted to a novel legal maneuver to keep a political ally in place as New Jersey's top prosecutor. Alina Habba, the Trump-appointed interim US attorney for New Jersey, resigned from her post on Thursday in an effort to keep it, after district judges for the statebooted her from the job. Habba, a former personal attorney for Trump and campaign spokesperson, said she will now be appointed as the "acting" US attorney for New Jersey. Habba's time as interim US attorney was due to expire on Friday. The move, according to one source familiar with the strategy, will prevent Habba's term from expiring and nullify an effort by the state's federal judges to name her replacement, leading to a simmering standoff between the administration and New Jerseys' judges. Meanwhile in the Senate, Republicans on the Judiciary Committee have offered a broad compromise to Democrats in an effort to break a blockade on the president's slate of US attorney nominees in hopes of getting a few confirmed before the Senate leaves for its monthlong recess in August, according to a source familiar with the negotiations. A spokesperson for the Senate Judiciary Democrats declined to comment on the situation. Administration officials were initially confident they would be able to install a slate of more than 30 US attorneys Trump nominated early in the year. But only a dozen have even moved past a preliminary committee vote and not a single nominee has received a confirmation vote on the Senate floor. While every recent president has gotten off to a slow start moving US attorney nominees, Trump is in danger of falling even further behind, especially amid concerns over the quality of some of the more controversial nominees tapped by Trump, some of whom have never worked as prosecutors. The clock is also running out on the interim status for many of Trump's US attorney picks, beyond Habba. Under federal law, if the administration doesn't fill the job and the Senate doesn't confirm a nominee within 120 days, federal judges can select a temporary US attorney, further undermining the administration's goal to have their own people in place. Pressure is therefore mounting on Republicans to cut a deal with Democrats to get at least a few nominees confirmed before the Senate leaves town for a month. "I think both sides understand that the current situation is untenable," the source familiar with the negotiations told CNN. Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin has since May put a blanket hold on Trump's slate of US attorney nominees, leaving the administration without top law enforcement officials in permanent roles as it presses forward with an aggressive agenda that includes a heavy focus on immigration enforcement and violent crime. Durbin has justified his blanket hold in part by arguing that then-Sen. JD Vance placed a similar hold on Democratic US attorney nominees during the Biden administration. "Sen. Durbin continues to discuss a path forward with his Democratic and Republican colleagues," Durbin spokesperson Josh Sorbe said in a statement to CNN. There are now a dozen US attorney nominees ready for a floor vote, after seven were passed out of committee on Thursday. That includes former Fox News personality Jeanine Pirro, who is in line to be the top federal prosecutor in Washington, DC. While US attorney nominees usually receive broad bipartisan support, some of Trump's nominees have made that more difficult. In comments on Thursday, even Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, acknowledged that some of the president's nominees are "controversial." "As chairman, I try to be fair to all members of the committee, even during controversial nominations. And we have plenty of them and have had plenty of them as well," Grassley said. The drama has been particularly acute in New Jersey, where the Justice Department spent much of the week engaged in a bitter standoff with the state's federal judges over who will be the state's top prosecutor. With Habba facing an unlikely road to confirmation in the Senate, and her interim status set to expire Friday, federal judges on Tuesday tapped Desiree Leigh Grace, a top federal prosecutor, to take over the office. The Justice Department immediately said it was removing Grace, though she vowed to take over the job next week. To do so, Grace would've had to be sworn in by a federal judge just after midnight Friday after Habba's interim term expired. But Habba short-circuited all that by resigning on Thursday, trading in her interim status as New Jersey's US attorney to an "acting" role, thus (in theory) restarting the clock on how long she can serve. "Donald J. Trump is the 47th President," Habba posted on Twitter on Thursday. "Pam Bondi is the Attorney General. And I am now the Acting United States Attorney for the District of New Jersey." Habba continued: "I don't cower to pressure. I don't answer to politics." Habba and the Justice Department both declined to comment when reached by CNN. Grace did not respond to CNN's request for additional comment. The White House had hoped to avoid all this. In the early days of Trump's second term, the administration worked to compile a slate of nominees to lead some of the 93 US attorneys' offices across the country. Top Justice Department officials, with input from the White House, selected dozens of nominees they believed could carry out the president's agenda – specifically on immigration and violent crime. While senior officials were initially confident they would be able to get these nominees confirmed, the process stalled earlier this year amid the disastrous attempt to force through the confirmation of Trump's nominee to lead the DC US Attorney's Office, Ed Martin. Martin's nomination was riddled with controversies. He had to repeatedly update his mandated disclosure forms to Congress and came under fire over hisprevious praiseof a Capitol rioter who is an alleged Nazi sympathizer. In the end, Martin's nomination was pulled and Trump in his place nominated Pirro, who is not without controversy herself following her years as a Fox News personality. US attorneys are the top law enforcement officials in each of the 93 judicial districts across the country. They play an important role in prosecuting federal crimes and defending the government in civil litigation. They are also key to implementing the president's agenda at the local level. "So much of our public focus is on the attorney general, and rightly so. However, the real engines who drive DOJ's day to day work and case making on a district-by-district basis, are the US attorneys. Each US attorney essentially runs one of those districts, and has very broad autonomy in how that office functions," said Elie Honig, a former federal and state prosecutor and CNN senior legal analyst. While nominees can serve temporarily on an interim or acting basis without getting Senate confirmation, it's less than ideal, said Honig. "There's a big impact where you have a non-confirmed US attorney, especially if there's flux and uncertainty. If you're going from one acting to another, interim back to the other acting, it causes chaos in those offices," Honig said. "It causes a lack of stability, a lack of a sense of mission. It undermines morale in those offices." Data from the Partnership for Public Service, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that advocates for an effective government workforce, shows that Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush were the only modern presidents able to get nominees confirmed by the six-month mark. Trump, in his first term, did not have any US attorneys confirmed after the first six months. Max Stier, PPS's president and CEO, notes that it is significant that in his second term Trump was quick to put up nominations, but that has not resulted in swift confirmations. "Instead of being ahead of the curve, they are now behind the curve," Stier said. Stier noted though that the pace of nominations is not what is slowing the administration from filling vacancies; it's the nature of the nominees. "It's not just a numbers game that we're watching this administration, even unlike the first Trump administration, is putting forward extraordinarily partisan and unqualified candidates for these positions, and it's not just in the District of Columbia," Stier said. Stier points to other examples including Habba, who has worked as Trump's personal attorney and campaign spokesman but never as a prosecutor. John Sarcone, Trump's pick for US attorney in Northern New York, has also been criticized for not having any prosecutorial experience. "I do think the extra element that's added here of consequence is the deeply flawed nature of a consequential number of the candidates that are being put up by this administration," Stier said. Acting US attorneys can still carry out the president's agenda without being confirmed by the Senate, but there are downsides. "I think his real view is that acting officials are people that don't have the oversight by the United States Senate and by the public through that process, and so that allows to put in place people who either shouldn't or would exact a political cost to actually get confirmed," Stier said. Senators have the option to personally request a confirmation that has been otherwise blocked or delayed in a process called "blue slipping," but a senior administration official told CNN: "Unless there is a deal struck, in blue states we are not going to get any blue slips." One notable example is how Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer declined to offer a blue slip for Jay Clayton, who was tapped to be US attorney in the Southern District of New York even though he is the former head of the SEC. "It's pretty crazy," the official said. For more CNN news and newsletters create an account atCNN.com