WASHINGTON – The U.S. Justice Department has set new dates to for the execution of federal death-row inmates following a months-long legal battle over the plan to resume the executions for the first time since 2003.

Attorney General William Barr directed the federal Bureau of Prisons to schedule the executions of four inmates convicted of killing children beginning in mid-July.

The Justice Department had scheduled five executions set to begin in December, but some of the inmates challenged the new procedures in court.

The inmates who will be executed are: Danny Lee, who was convicted of killing a family of three, including an 8-year-old; Wesley Ira Purkey, who raped and murdered a 16-year-old girl and killed an 80-year-old woman; Dustin Lee Honken, who killed five people, including two children; and Keith Dwayne Nelson, who kidnapped a 10-year-old girl who was rollerblading in front of her home and raped her in a forest behind a church before strangling the young girl to death with a wire.

Three of the executions – for Lee, Purkley and Honken – are scheduled days apart beginning July 13. Nelson’s execution is scheduled for Aug. 28. The Justice Department said additional executions will be set later.