Delaware is geographically the smallest state in the Third Circuit, yet its lone federal trial court — the United States District Court for the District of Delaware — hears some of the most consequential financial prosecutions in the country. The reason is structural: an outsized share of American corporate and banking life is organized under Delaware law, and criminal cases involving the entities, accounts, and executives connected to that activity tend to land in Wilmington.
Below, we walk through how this court actually works for a criminal defendant — its courthouse and bench, the U.S. Attorney’s Office that prosecutes there, what the district’s docket looks like in the government’s own data, and how we defend clients in it. Elizabeth Franklin-Best, P.C. defends federal criminal cases, appeals, and post-conviction matters nationwide; Elizabeth Franklin-Best is named a “Best Lawyer” in Appellate Practice by Best Lawyers in America 2026, and Chambers USA 2026 ranks the firm for Litigation: White-Collar Crime & Government Investigations. This page is part of our federal courts directory, under the Third Circuit.
If you have received a target letter, a grand jury subpoena, or news of an indictment out of Wilmington, we offer a paid, one-hour initial consultation to evaluate the matter before the government’s timeline takes over.
Table of Contents
Quick Answer: District of Delaware
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| Which court hears federal criminal cases in Delaware? | The U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware — one statewide district that sits at the J. Caleb Boggs Federal Building, 844 N. King Street in Wilmington. |
| How large is the bench? | As of June 2026, the court’s roster lists Chief Judge Colm F. Connolly, four other district judges, and four magistrate judges, supplemented by visiting judges designated from other federal courts. |
| Who brings the prosecutions? | The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Delaware in Wilmington, led by U.S. Attorney Benjamin L. Wallace (appointed December 2025), whose criminal division includes a section devoted to fraud and public corruption. |
| Where do appeals from this district go? | To the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, sitting in Philadelphia, which also covers New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. |
| Where is a Section 2255 motion filed? | Back in the District of Delaware itself — federal post-conviction motions return to the district of conviction. |
| Can your firm appear in this court? | Yes. We appear through the court’s Local Rule 83.5(c) pro hac vice procedure, associated with Delaware counsel as the rule contemplates. |
| What is the first step to retain you? | Booking the paid, one-hour initial consultation, where we review the investigation or charges and lay out the realistic options. |
Key Takeaways
- Every federal criminal case in Delaware is tried in a single statewide district whose courthouse is the J. Caleb Boggs Federal Building in Wilmington.
- As of June 2026 the bench comprises Chief Judge Colm F. Connolly, four other district judges, and four magistrate judges, with visiting judges from other federal courts regularly designated to assist.
- U.S. Sentencing Commission data show just 95 individuals were sentenced in the district in fiscal year 2024 — one of the smallest federal criminal dockets in the nation.
- That small docket skews financial: Delaware’s money-laundering share of sentencings (7.4%) ran more than triple the national figure (2.1%) in FY2024.
- The U.S. Attorney’s Office fields a Fraud and Public Corruption Section that concentrates on bank, securities, healthcare, and mortgage fraud.
- Recent decisions — Ciminelli, Kousisis, and the Third Circuit’s intended-loss ruling in Banks — have redrawn the boundaries of federal fraud litigation in this district.
- Appeals from Wilmington go to the Third Circuit; the criminal notice of appeal is generally due within 14 days of entry of judgment.
- Section 2255 and compassionate-release motions are filed back in the District of Delaware, the district of conviction.
- We appear in this court pro hac vice under Local Rule 83.5(c), working alongside associated Delaware counsel.
The District of Delaware at a Glance
The United States District Court for the District of Delaware covers all three Delaware counties from a single seat: the J. Caleb Boggs Federal Building at 844 North King Street in Wilmington. There are no divisional courthouses — whether an investigation arises in Dover, Sussex County, or downtown Wilmington, the arraignment, motions, trial, and sentencing all happen in the same building.
The bench is correspondingly compact. As of June 2026, the court’s roster lists Chief Judge Colm F. Connolly and District Judges Maryellen Noreika, Gregory B. Williams, Jennifer L. Hall, and Richard G. Andrews, together with Magistrate Judges Christopher J. Burke, Sherry R. Fallon, Laura D. Hatcher, and Eleanor G. Tennyson. In criminal matters the magistrate judges typically conduct initial appearances, arraignments, and detention hearings before the case is assigned to a district judge.
One feature sets this district apart: the court publishes a standing roster of visiting judges — judges of other district courts, the Third Circuit, and the Federal Circuit who sit in Wilmington by designation to help carry the district’s famously heavy civil and patent caseload. A defendant whose case is assigned to a visiting judge is still in the District of Delaware, under the same Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure and the court’s own local rules and standing orders, and any appeal still goes to the Third Circuit.
A Corporate Capital’s Criminal Docket
Delaware’s identity as the nation’s incorporation capital gives its federal docket a distinctly financial character. Corporate charters, holding companies, bank subsidiaries, and the professionals who service them are concentrated within blocks of the courthouse, and when criminal exposure touches those structures — a misstated filing, a diverted account, a laundered transfer — venue frequently lies in Wilmington. The U.S. Attorney’s Office — led by U.S. Attorney Benjamin L. Wallace, who was appointed in December 2025 — is organized for that work: its criminal division includes a Fraud and Public Corruption Section, supported by a financial analyst, that concentrates on bank fraud, securities fraud, healthcare fraud, mortgage fraud, and public-corruption prosecutions.
The numbers tell the same story. According to the U.S. Sentencing Commission’s FY2024 Statistical Information Packet, just 95 individuals were sentenced in the District of Delaware that fiscal year — among the smallest federal criminal dockets in the country. Drug trafficking (32 cases), immigration (29), and firearms (14) led by volume, but money laundering made up 7.4% of the district’s sentencings against a 2.1% national share — more than triple the national rate, and a direct reflection of the financial activity that flows through the state.
Recent prosecutions show the ceiling on exposure. In June 2025, after an eight-day jury trial, the court sentenced the owner of a Wilmington precious-metals depository to the statutory-maximum 65 years in prison on mail fraud, wire fraud, and tax evasion convictions, after evidence showed at least $76 million missing from more than 1,000 customer accounts. The office has also resolved healthcare matters civilly, including an April 2026 False Claims Act settlement of genetic-testing fraud allegations against a former Delaware physician — a reminder that financial investigations here often run on parallel civil and criminal tracks.
When the allegations in your case sound like any of this, our offense-level pages on federal fraud defense, money laundering defense, white-collar crime defense, and federal tax crimes explain the governing statutes and the defenses that work against them.
Recent Law Shaping Delaware Federal Cases (2023–2026)
Federal fraud law has narrowed meaningfully over the Supreme Court’s last three terms. Ciminelli v. United States, 598 U.S. 306 (2023), eliminated the “right to control” theory of wire fraud, holding that depriving a victim of useful economic information is not, by itself, a deprivation of property. Kousisis v. United States, 605 U.S. 114 (2025) — a case that reached the Court from the Third Circuit — then confirmed that fraudulent-inducement prosecutions remain viable even without net economic loss to the victim, with materiality doing the limiting work. The theory an indictment pleads can now decide whether a corporate misrepresentation case states a federal crime at all, and we press that question early.
On sentencing, the Third Circuit held in United States v. Banks, 55 F.4th 246 (3d Cir. 2022), that the term “loss” in the fraud guideline means actual loss, rejecting the higher intended-loss figure long imported from commentary — a defendant-favorable rule the Sentencing Commission answered in Amendment 827 (effective November 1, 2024) by moving the intended-loss rule into the text of §2B1.1 itself. The timing of conduct and sentencing therefore matters, and loss calculation remains the center of gravity in every Delaware fraud sentencing.
Firearms cases — 14.7% of the district’s FY2024 sentencings — carry a live constitutional issue of their own. In Range v. Attorney General, 124 F.4th 218 (3d Cir. 2024) (en banc), the Third Circuit held the federal felon-in-possession statute unconstitutional as applied to a man whose only disqualifying conviction was a decades-old false-statement offense. The Supreme Court did not settle the felon-in-possession question in its June 2026 decision in United States v. Hemani, which struck down a prosecution under the separate drug-user prohibition of Section 922(g)(3) and left the felon-in-possession statute untouched. The circuits remain divided and this area is moving fast, but within the Third Circuit an as-applied Second Amendment challenge to a §922(g)(1) charge belongs on the table.
Federal Criminal Cases in the District
For all its corporate flavor, the district’s criminal calendar runs the full federal range — drug trafficking out of the I-95 corridor, firearms prosecutions, and the financial cases described above. Whatever the charge, a Delaware federal case follows a sequence worth understanding before the first court date.
The opening move is usually the government’s: an FBI or IRS-CI investigation that surfaces through a target letter, a grand jury subpoena, or agents at the door. If charges follow, they typically come by grand jury indictment returned in Wilmington. A magistrate judge then conducts the initial appearance and arraignment and rules on detention; the case proceeds through discovery and pretrial motions before a district judge, and resolves by negotiated plea or jury trial, with sentencing under the Guidelines framework to follow any conviction. Our federal criminal process hub breaks down each of these stages.
At every one of those stages we are building something: a record of the government’s theory and its weak points, suppression and dismissal motions where the facts support them, a negotiating posture grounded in what the evidence actually shows, and — where trial is the right answer — a trial defense prepared from day one rather than assembled at the end.
Applied Insight: A docket as small as Delaware’s changes the math of defense strategy. The same prosecutors, agents, and judges work together repeatedly, charging decisions are unhurried and deliberate, and a careful pre-indictment presentation from the defense gets read closely. Where the government has time to be thorough, the defense must be more thorough still — which is why the investigation phase, not the arraignment, is the moment to bring counsel in.
Appeals and Post-Conviction Matters
Sentencing in Wilmington is not the last word. Convictions from this district are reviewed by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in Philadelphia, and the deadline is unforgiving — a criminal notice of appeal is generally due within 14 days after entry of judgment, so the appellate decision has to be made before the sting of sentencing fades.
Collateral challenges come back to this courthouse: a motion under 28 U.S.C. § 2255 attacking a District of Delaware conviction or sentence is filed in the District of Delaware, as are compassionate release motions and other post-conviction relief. The legal terrain shifted in May 2026, when the Supreme Court in Rutherford v. United States — affirming the Third Circuit — held that nonretroactive changes in sentencing law cannot qualify as extraordinary and compelling reasons for compassionate release, which makes careful motion selection in this district more important than ever. Appellate and post-conviction litigation is the core of our practice, and because it turns on national federal law and a written record, we handle it in Wilmington as readily as anywhere else.
How We Defend Cases in the District of Delaware
Our firm appears in the District of Delaware through the court’s own pro hac vice mechanism. Under District of Delaware Local Rule 83.5(c), Delaware counsel files the motion and proposed order for the out-of-state attorney’s admission, with the applicant’s certification attached and a modest admission fee paid to the Clerk. We handle that association as a matter of course — the client gets our federal defense work plus a Delaware-barred attorney of record, exactly as the court’s rule contemplates.
Cross-district practice is unremarkable in federal court precisely because the law being applied is national: the same criminal code, the same Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, the same Sentencing Guidelines. What varies district to district is texture — local rules, standing orders, and the practical rhythms of a particular bench — and that is what association with local counsel, plus preparation, covers.
Elizabeth Franklin-Best is admitted to the bar of the U.S. Supreme Court and all twelve federal circuit courts of appeals, including the Third Circuit that reviews every Delaware federal conviction, and she is the author of Reversing Your Criminal Conviction. Her practice spans more than 330 federal proceedings, including over 100 federal appeals, with representations briefed and argued across every federal circuit and at the certiorari stage of the Supreme Court, the kind of appellate and post-conviction depth a complex Wilmington financial case can demand. For a defendant weighing counsel for a Wilmington case, the question worth asking is not who has the closest office — it is who has spent a career litigating federal trials, appeals, and post-conviction motions.
Frequently Asked Questions
What court handles federal criminal cases in Delaware?
All federal criminal cases arising in Delaware are heard by the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware, which sits at the J. Caleb Boggs Federal Building, 844 North King Street in Wilmington. The district covers the entire state, so there is no separate division for Dover or the southern counties.
Who are the judges of the District of Delaware?
As of June 2026, the court’s roster lists Chief Judge Colm F. Connolly and District Judges Maryellen Noreika, Gregory B. Williams, Jennifer L. Hall, and Richard G. Andrews, along with four magistrate judges. Visiting judges from other federal courts also sit in Wilmington by designation and occasionally preside over criminal matters.
Who prosecutes federal crimes in the District of Delaware?
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Delaware, based in Wilmington, prosecutes every federal criminal case in the state. Benjamin L. Wallace was appointed U.S. Attorney in December 2025. The office’s criminal division includes a Fraud and Public Corruption Section that concentrates on bank, securities, healthcare, and mortgage fraud — the kinds of charges Delaware’s corporate and banking footprint generates.
What kinds of federal cases are most common in Delaware?
Sentencing Commission data for fiscal year 2024 show 95 people sentenced in the district: drug trafficking (32), immigration (29), and firearms (14) led by count, with money laundering and fraud rounding out the docket. Delaware’s money-laundering share was more than three times the national rate, reflecting the financial character of the district.
Which appeals court covers the District of Delaware?
Appeals from the District of Delaware go to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, which sits in Philadelphia and also covers New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. A criminal notice of appeal generally must be filed within 14 days of the entry of judgment.
How does a federal criminal case proceed in the District of Delaware?
Most cases start with a federal investigation — often signaled by a target letter or grand jury subpoena — followed by an indictment returned in Wilmington. A magistrate judge handles the initial appearance, arraignment, and any detention hearing; the case then moves through discovery and pretrial motions before a district judge and is resolved by plea agreement or jury trial, with sentencing under the federal Guidelines after any conviction.
Can an out-of-state lawyer represent me in the District of Delaware?
Yes. Under the court’s Local Rule 83.5(c), an attorney who is not a member of the district’s bar is admitted pro hac vice on a motion filed by associated Delaware counsel, with a $50 admission fee paid to the Clerk. It is a routine procedure, and because federal criminal law is national, experienced federal practitioners appear across district lines constantly.
Why does Delaware see so many financial and money-laundering cases?
Because an enormous amount of American corporate and banking activity is legally organized in Delaware, the transactions, accounts, and entities tied to alleged schemes often create federal venue in Wilmington. Prosecutors there maintain a section built specifically for complex fraud and corruption cases, and the district’s money-laundering numbers consistently outpace its size.
Does the firm handle federal cases in the District of Delaware?
Yes. Elizabeth Franklin-Best, P.C. defends federal criminal matters in the District of Delaware through pro hac vice admission with associated Delaware counsel — trial-level defense, direct appeals to the Third Circuit, and post-conviction litigation including Section 2255 and compassionate-release motions. The first step is a paid, one-hour initial consultation.
Talk With a Federal Defense Lawyer About Your Delaware Case
Whether the problem is a grand jury subpoena from Wilmington, an indictment already returned, or a Delaware conviction you want challenged on appeal or under § 2255, the place to start is a clear-eyed assessment of the record. We offer a paid, one-hour initial consultation for exactly that purpose — bring us the documents, and we will tell you honestly where the case stands. You can also compare the neighboring District of New Jersey and Eastern District of Pennsylvania pages if your matter spans the region.