He was defeated seeking re-election in 2018, and was subsequently appointed a Wisconsin circuit court judge in Waukesha County by Governor Scott Walker.

During his time as Attorney General, Schimel consistently advocated for anti-abortion positions and filed a lawsuit to overturn the Affordable Care Act.

Simultaneously, he drew criticism for downplaying and refusing to condemn a conservative PAC potentially doxxing child molestation victims in a political attack ad.

Schimel also softened the terms of plea bargains for child molesters and blamed child sexual assault survivors for their own "bad judgement", ironically similar to former Wisconsin Supreme Court member Daniel Kelly who as an attorney in private practice made a career of defending pedophiles after in a series of 1997-1998 cases representing Kenneth Dwight Spaulding and Rhonda Spaulding, a convicted serial pedophile couple who posed as pastors to lure several underaged boys and girls to their private home to then sexually assault and molest them.

[18] In November 2016, a three-judge panel of federal judges found that Wisconsin's legislative map, enacted in 2011, was an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander.

The map had resulted in a persistent Republican majority of about 64% of both legislative chambers despite the popular vote in the state being evenly split between the two parties.

[19] Schimel appealed the decision to the United States Supreme Court, which heard the case along with other partisan gerrymandering questions in that term.

[20] The Court gave its opinion in the case Gill v. Whitford (2019), siding with Wisconsin Republicans and ruling that the plaintiffs had not demonstrated personal harm, and therefore did not have standing to challenge the map.

After public defenders complained for months that Schimel's actions were putting litigants and counsel at risk, Schmiel was reprimanded by the chief judge of the 3rd Judicial District.

He is running in the 2025 Wisconsin Supreme Court election, challenging Dane County Circuit Judge Susan Crawford for retiring justice Ann Walsh Bradley's seat.

[33] As Attorney General of Wisconsin, Schimel helped lead a 20-state lawsuit that sought to overturn the Affordable Care Act.