At 45 years of age, the Union’s attorney general, Jorge Messias, will be able to remain at the Federal Supreme Court (STF) until he turns 75, in 2055, the age limit for serving at the Court. If his nomination is confirmed by the Senate, Messias will have one of the longest terms among current ministers, with the potential to influence court decisions for up to three decades.
Longevity in office reinforces President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s strategy of consolidating a lasting brand in the Judiciary. With Messias, Lula will have appointed five of the 11 ministers currently active, which represents almost half of the Court’s composition.
In the current composition of the Federal Supreme Court, four ministers were appointed by Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva: Cármen Lúcia (2006), Dias Toffoli (2009), Cristiano Zanin (2023) and Flávio Dino (2024).
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Cármen Lúcia and Toffoli were appointed in Lula’s first terms, while Zanin and Dino arrived at the STF during his third government. The last two have direct ties to the president: Zanin was his lawyer at Lava-Jato, and Dino served as Minister of Justice.
Cármen Lúcia, appointed in 2006, is due to retire in April 2029, at the age of 75. Toffoli, appointed in 2009, could remain on the Court until November 2042. The two most recent ones — Zanin and Dino — have even longer terms ahead of them: Dino, aged 55, could stay until 2043; Zanin, the youngest member of the Court, will be able to remain until November 2050, totaling almost 30 years of experience.
Messias is a lawyer, master and doctor in Law from the University of Brasília (UnB), with a degree from the Federal University of Pernambuco (UFPE). He currently holds the position of Attorney General of the Union, appointed by Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in 2023.
A career civil servant at the Federal Attorney General’s Office since 2007, Messias served as a prosecutor at the National Treasury and held several positions in the federal government, such as deputy chief for Legal Affairs at the Presidency of the Republic, legal consultant at the ministries of Education and Science and Technology, and secretary of Regulation and Supervision of Higher Education.
Evangelical, member of the Baptist Church, Messias is married and father of two children. His career is marked by technical performance and closeness to President Lula, who considers him a trustworthy man. This relationship strengthened his name to be nominated to the STF. Messias also has a trajectory marked by closeness and trust with central PT figures, especially former president Dilma Rousseff and Aloizio Mercadante, current president of BNDES.
Who is Messiah?
A career public servant, Messias was a Central Bank attorney and National Treasury attorney. When he became involved in the AGU careers union movement, he worked at the Ministry of Education, under Mercadante’s management, where he was Secretary of Regulation. It was during this period that he began to get closer to PT leaders.
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During the Dilma government, he was deputy head of Legal Affairs and worked with the former president in one of the PT’s most delicate moments at the Palácio do Planalto. At the time, his name was exposed nationally due to a telephone interception published by Lava Jato, in a conversation between Lula and Dilma, in March 2016. At the time, Dilma informed Lula that she would send, through “Bessias”, a term of office for him to sign and, thus, become minister of the Civil House. The interception was captured after the then judge Sergio Moro had ordered telephone operators to interrupt the recordings, which led to its disclosure being considered illegal by the Federal Supreme Court (STF).
Messias and Dilma never left each other. The former president attended Messias’ inauguration ceremony as AGU minister, in 2023, and at a dinner reserved for family and close friends. In 2019, Messias worked in the office of senator Jaques Wagner (PT-BA). With Lula’s victory in 2022, he played a prominent role in the transition, when he coordinated the group dedicated to topics related to Transparency, Integrity and Control.
Within the government, he built a close relationship with the Minister of Management, Esther Dweck, and the Minister of Agrarian Development, Paulo Teixeira. It also has among its main allies the ministers of the Civil House, Rui Costa, of Finance, Fernando Haddad, and the minister of Institutional Relations, Gleisi Hoffmann.
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