The former president has brought Christopher M. Kise onto his legal team after struggling to find high-profile lawyers willing to work for him on the investigation into his handling of classified material.
The judge, an appointee of President Donald J. Trump, indicated she was prepared to grant Mr. Trump’s request for an arbiter, or special master, to review the documents seized by the F.B.I.
The subpoena, issued in May to the National Archives, demanded all of the documents the agency had provided to the House committee’s parallel investigation.
The former president and his allies have given often conflicting defenses of his retention of classified documents, without addressing why he had kept them.
Stephen K. Bannon, the former Trump campaign manager and White House adviser, made the abrupt about-face after the former president authorized him to talk to investigators.