diff --git a/Misc/NEWS b/Misc/NEWS
index 5e6a17b2616..55403e9efdf 100644
--- a/Misc/NEWS
+++ b/Misc/NEWS
@@ -28,6 +28,9 @@ Core and Builtins
 Library
 -------
 
+- Issue #19420: Fix reference leak in module initalization code of
+  _hashopenssl.c
+
 - Issue #19329: Optimized compiling charsets in regular expressions.
 
 - Issue #19227: Try to fix deadlocks caused by re-seeding then OpenSSL
diff --git a/Modules/_hashopenssl.c b/Modules/_hashopenssl.c
index 423b3b3a476..a4f610450e4 100644
--- a/Modules/_hashopenssl.c
+++ b/Modules/_hashopenssl.c
@@ -717,9 +717,9 @@ _openssl_hash_name_mapper(const OBJ_NAME *openssl_obj_name, void *arg)
         state->error = 1;
     } else {
         if (PySet_Add(state->set, py_name) != 0) {
-            Py_DECREF(py_name);
             state->error = 1;
         }
+        Py_DECREF(py_name);
     }
 }