Civil rights advocates, however, are skeptical. Ms. Jackson — who was appointed as a deputy in the civil rights office, but is leading it in an acting capacity — has never worked in civil rights enforcement and has criticized affirmative action and the women’s rights movement.

Ms. Jackson has not spoken publicly about her stances on social or educational issues, but her Twitter posts offer a glimpse of her views on certain issues.

In January, she shared an article about Mr. Trump being an ally of the gay community and commented that “Reasonable LGBT citizens (as opposed to the militant left-wing LGBT movement) have reason to cheer POTUS Trump; he’s shifting the GOP.” In another post, she wrote that “True choice combined with fiscal federalism is the way up for American schools and is on our horizon thanks to POTUS Trump.” And on Inauguration Day, she defended the Clintons, tweeting, “Truly disappointed that our wonderful MAGA crowd chose to boo the Clintons. Give them credit for respecting the Office & showing up,” including a reference to President Trump’s campaign slogan of “Make America Great Again.”

In a recent research brief, a Georgetown University research organization, FutureEd, compiled a profile of quotes from Ms. Jackson’s college days writing for The Stanford Review, her university’s conservative student newspaper.

“As with most liberal solutions to a problem, giving special assistance to minority students is a band-aid solution to a deep problem,” Ms. Jackson wrote in The Review in 1998. The same year, she maintained that “college women who insist on banding together by gender to fight for their rights are moving backwards, not forwards.”

Eric Jackson, who wrote on The Stanford Review with Ms. Jackson but is not related to her, said that Ms. Jackson has been unfairly tarred by views from decades ago. As a classmate, he recalled that she challenged the liberal viewpoints widely held on campus as a self-proclaimed “libertarian feminist.” But he added that Ms. Jackson is an astute lawyer who follows the rule of law and understands vulnerability.