Status: 🔴 Assistant United States Attorney, Northern District of Texas (Fort Worth Division) — prosecuting criminal grand jury investigation into transgender youth healthcare
Ethan Womble is an Assistant United States Attorney in the Northern District of Texas, Fort Worth Division. He is one of several former clerks to Judge Reed O’Connor who now work in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for that district, creating a direct pipeline between O’Connor’s chambers and the DOJ’s campaign against transgender healthcare.
Womble signed and issued the May 6, 2026 criminal grand jury subpoena to NYU Langone Hospitals in New York City, demanding the names and medical records of every transgender minor patient treated since 2020. The subpoena represented the first known criminal escalation of the DOJ’s anti-trans healthcare enforcement campaign, moving from the civil administrative subpoenas that eight federal courts had uniformly quashed.
On May 6, 2026, Womble issued a grand jury subpoena (Case No. TXN 5 3130) to NYU Langone Hospitals, located approximately 2,000 miles from the Northern District of Texas. The subpoena demanded:
The subpoena was served on NYU Langone on May 7, 2026, with documents due before the grand jury on June 10, 2026.
The case is being investigated by Special Agent Bradley Cooper of the FDA Office of Criminal Investigations, with documents directed to the Kansas City Field Office.
Womble is a former law clerk to Judge Reed O’Connor of the Northern District of Texas, one of the most conservative federal district judges in the country. O’Connor has presided over numerous high-profile cases targeting transgender rights, including:
Womble is part of a documented pipeline of O’Connor clerks entering the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Texas. According to reporting by Chris Geidner (LawDork), other former O’Connor clerks in the same office include Ryan Raybould, and Brittany M. Spear previously clerked in the same chambers before moving to private practice at Sidley Austin.
Womble’s role in the NYU Langone subpoena represents the intersection of several troubling dynamics: