Pam Bondi, Donald Trump’s new pick to lead the US justice department, was the first female attorney general of Florida but is perhaps best known in recent years as a loyalist to the former president.

Trump announced Bondi as his nominee for US attorney general on Thursday hours after Matt Gaetz, Trump’s first pick, bowed out of consideration amid growing Republican opposition following sexual misconduct allegations against him.

“I am proud to announce former Attorney General of the Great State of Florida, Pam Bondi, as our next Attorney General of the United States. Pam was a prosecutor for nearly 20 years, where she was very tough on Violent Criminals,” Trump said in a Truth Social post.

Bondi has been a chair at the America First Policy Institute, a thinktank set up by former Trump administration staffers, and served on Trump’s first transition team.

The 59-year-old has been a longtime Trump ally – she was considered during his first term as a potential candidate for the nation’s highest law enforcement role.

Trump was told by advisers that she was a good alternative to Gaetz because she has allies across the Republican party as well as inside Trump’s world, according to people familiar with the matter, the Guardian reported on Thursday.

Before she became involved in national politics, Bondi spent more than 18 years as a prosecutor in the Hillsborough county state attorney’s office. She was a political unknown when she was elected as Florida’s first female attorney general in 2010 and had received an endorsement from the former vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin.

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She served as Florida’s top prosecutor from 2011 to 2019, and later as a lobbyist for US and international clients.

Bondi’s tenure as attorney general also coincided with two of the most high-profile and deadly shootings the nation has seen. In 2016, after 47 people were shot and killed and more than 50 were injured in an extremist attack on an LGBTQ+ nightclub in Orlando, Bondi was called out on-air by CNN’s Anderson Cooper over her support for a ban on same-sex marriage in the state.

Two years later, 17 students and staff were shot and killed by a former student at Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school. Bondi called for the death penalty for the shooter and supported then governor Rick Scott in the passage of the state’s first gun-restriction legislation, which raised the minimum age for someone to buy a gun from 18 to 21. It also appropriates millions of dollars for expanded mental health resources in schools, to build a replacement for Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school and for heightened campus security.

Bondi’s ties to Trump go back years. While serving as Florida’s attorney general, she backed Trump in 2016 over a candidate from her home state, Marco Rubio.

In 2016, the Associated Press revealed that Bondi had personally asked Trump for a donation to her campaign three years earlier. The funds came through a Trump family foundation, which is in violation of policies around charities engaging in politics. The $25,000 donation also came as Bondi’s office was considering joining New York in an investigation of Trump’s universities, over allegations of fraud and false promises about what training and job prospects for students would look like. Once the check arrived, Bondi declined to participate in the investigation, according to the Associated Press.

Bondi did try to send the check back, the Florida Times-Union reported, but it was rejected and returned by Trump.

Bondi was then one of Trump’s attorneys during his 2019 impeachment proceedings, when he was accused – but not convicted – of trying to make military assistance to Ukraine dependent on that country’s willingness to investigate Joe Biden. And during Trump’s hush-money trial, Bondi was one of a handful of Republicans to show up to court to support him.

Bondi has harshly criticized the criminal cases against Trump as well as Jack Smith, the special counsel who charged Trump in two federal cases. She described Smith and other prosecutors who have charged Trump as “horrible” people “weaponizing our legal system”.

If she is confirmed, Bondi will join several other members of Trump’s legal team in the justice department.

The Associated Press contributed reporting