The staff of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division gathered this morning in their fifth floor conference room — J. Edgar Hoover’s former office — for an “all hands” meeting with Attorney General Eric Holder, who announced that his current deputy chief of staff Molly Moran would be taking over as acting head of the Civil Rights Division. The Division has been without a permanent leader since Tom Perez became Labor Secretary last July. The Senate — including seven Democrats — blocked the nomination of Debo Adegbile to head the office due to his representation of Mumia Abu-Jamal, convicted of murdering a Philadelphia police officer. Moran, an Indiana native who has been at DOJ since 2009, is “uniquely well positioned to advance the Civil Rights Division’s agenda, from voting rights enforcement to reforming school discipline policies and beyond,” Holder said Thursday. Adegbile’s nomination is technically still pending.