Andrew Bailey will step down on October 2 after serving alongside Dan Bongino and Christopher Raia in an unusual shared No. 2 leadership arrangement.
WASHINGTON, DC: Andrew Bailey is leaving the FBI after roughly a year as one of the bureau’s two co-deputy directors, ending another chapter in an unusual leadership arrangement under Director Kash Patel.
Bailey announced Monday, September 28, that he will step down on October 2 and return to his family in Missouri. He thanked President Donald Trump, Attorney General Todd Blanche, and Patel for the opportunity to serve.
Andrew Bailey’s rapid rise takes another turn
Bailey joined the FBI after a rapid rise through Missouri government.
Gov. Mike Parson appointed him Missouri attorney general in January 2023 after then-Attorney General Eric Schmitt was elected to the U.S. Senate. Bailey later won a full term before leaving the office for Washington.
Bailey resigned as attorney general in September 2025 to become an FBI co-deputy director. He was appointed to the role alongside Dan Bongino, creating an unusual arrangement in which two officials shared the deputy-director position.
At the FBI, Bailey was involved in high-profile law-enforcement operations, including Operation VIPER in the St. Louis region.
The two-week operation resulted in 91 arrests, 36 firearms seized, and roughly $310,000 in recovered cash, according to Missouri reporting.
Bailey also represented the FBI in international meetings in Argentina and Guatemala involving law-enforcement and security cooperation.
Bailey said his departure was about returning home to spend time with his family. FBI Director Kash Patel praised his contributions, saying the reforms Bailey helped implement would continue.
Dan Bongino’s exit reshaped the FBI’s No. 2 position
Bailey initially joined the FBI alongside Dan Bongino, whose appointment marked a departure from the traditional career-agent path to the deputy-director position.
Bongino had worked for the NYPD and Secret Service before becoming a conservative media personality. He had never served as an FBI agent.
Bongino announced in December 2025 that he would leave the bureau and officially departed in January 2026. Christopher Raia later replaced him as Bailey’s co-deputy director.
Raia was a career FBI agent who joined the bureau in 2003 and had held senior counterterrorism and national-security positions before leading the FBI’s New York field office.
Senior FBI turnover predates Bailey’s departure
Bailey’s exit comes after a broader period of personnel changes at the bureau.
Before Patel formally became FBI director in February 2025, several senior officials were ordered to leave or faced dismissal, according to reporting at the time.
Later personnel changes affected senior FBI officials and field-office leaders. Bailey’s departure also comes shortly after the bureau reassigned two senior counterterrorism supervisors over their handling of an investigation into allegedly harassing calls involving Katie Miller, the wife of senior White House aide Stephen Miller, according to reporting.
Reuters reported that Bailey had helped oversee election-related investigations and was present earlier this year when FBI agents seized 2020 election ballots from Georgia.
Bailey said he was leaving to return to his family in Missouri. In a statement following his resignation announcement, he expressed confidence that Patel would continue his work at the FBI.
The FBI disputed that account, saying Bailey told the workforce that he was leaving for family reasons and that the claim he was “annoyed” by the personnel changes was false.
The bureau said Bailey supported those decisions and described the report as “clickbait dressed up as reporting.”
No successor to Bailey had been announced when his departure was reported on Monday.
