[html] Is putting a div inside an anchor ever correct?

If you want to avoid the semantic trouble of placing divs inside anchor tags, just place the anchor tag on the same level as the divs, wrap them all with a container with position: relative, make your anchor tag position: absolute and expand it to fill the container. Also if it's not on the end of the content flow make sure you throw a z-index in there to place it above the content.

As suggested I have added a markup code:

<div class="div__container>
  <div class="div__one>
  </div>
  <div class="div__two">
  </div>
  <a href="#"></a>
</div>

And the css:

.div__container {
  position: relative; 
}
.div__container a {
  position: absolute;
  top: 0;
  bottom: 0;      
  left: 0;
  right: 0;
  z-index: 999;
}