MOBILE, Ala. — In a rare public appearance since his resignation last November, former Attorney General Jeff Sessions Thursday night gave a ringing defense of his tenure as head of the Justice Department. It was and is a defense well worth making.

Sessions was speaking in his hometown of Mobile, Ala., at a dinner celebrating the 30th anniversary of the Alabama Policy Institute, one of the first and most successful of the nation’s growing number of conservative state think tanks. API’s co-founder and longtime president, Gary Palmer, is now in Congress, heading the House Republican Policy Committee.