Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Campbell said she plans to ask the state Legislature for additional funding this budget season in anticipation of legal battles with President Donald Trump’s incoming administration.

The funds would be used to beef up staffing, Campbell, a Democrat, told the Herald Monday at an unrelated event held around the same time Trump, a Republican, was sworn in as president for a second term. The amount the attorney general plans to request has not yet been determined, according to her office.

The Attorney General’s office 2024 payroll consisted of 859 employees who collectively were paid nearly $56 million, according to state data. Of that staff, 183 are earning more than $100,000, according to a Herald review.

“We continue to go back to the state Legislature … to push them to continue to give us the resources to do our work,” Campbell said Monday. “What I’m most concerned about with the new administration is that they will step away from some of our work, especially when it comes to consumer protection issues, and we’re going to need more staff to handle those types of cases.”

Campbell was likely referring to changes Trump and Republicans in Congress are considering that would limit the powers and funding of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a federal watchdog agency formed after the 2008 banking crisis to protect Americans from predatory financial practices.

The attorney general also spoke of the need to equip her office with legal professionals with the “institutional knowledge and expertise” to respond to Trump’s vow to carry out mass deportations, and other executive actions that she sees as being harmful to Massachusetts “residents and our economy.”

The “rhetoric” from the second Trump administration around mass deportations indicates such a sweeping effort against illegal immigration would be “unlawful,” Campbell said, “given the magnitude and scale of what they’re talking about.”

She also anticipates that her office may need additional staffing — along with a reorganization of existing employees — to take legal action to protect the state’s economy, saying that “mass deportations in that scale and scope” would “threaten” healthcare and higher education.

“We don’t know what’s going to come,” Campbell said. “This is just based on rhetoric, but we have staff ready to respond to the federal administration, or anyone else, to hold them accountable. In this instance, we’re continuing to work with the Legislature to continue to make sure we have the adequate resources to do our work appropriately.”

Campbell’s predecessor, Gov. Maura Healey, sued the first Trump administration nearly 100 times as attorney general but has softened her stance this time around.

Prior remarks made by Healey are similar to the tack taken thus far by Campbell.

“We look forward to working with the president,” Campbell said. “If it is about protecting our residents and working in collaboration to promote and advance our economy here in the Commonwealth, I am right there in partnership with him and the administration.

“If there are actions that will threaten the interests of our residents or our economy, I’m there to hold them accountable like anyone else,” she added. “So, we shall see … We will be reviewing anything they pass by executive order later today and anything they share with us.”

Trump’s flurry of executive orders would clamp down on border crossings, increase fossil fuel development, end diversity, equity and inclusion programs across the federal government, and proclaim the U.S. government would only recognize two sexes — male and female.

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