Federal Criminal Defense in the District of Maryland

By Elizabeth Franklin-Best, Esq., and Christopher Zoukis, JD, MBA

The United States District Court for the District of Maryland hears every federal criminal case arising in the state, dividing its work between a Northern Division courthouse at 101 West Lombard Street in Baltimore and a Southern Division courthouse in Greenbelt, just outside Washington. The docket those courthouses carry is distinctive: in fiscal year 2024, fraud, theft, and embezzlement accounted for 20.5% of the district’s 449 federal sentencings — more than double the 8.6% national share — while firearms cases, at 24.1%, ran nearly twice the national rate. Few districts prosecute white-collar and violent crime in such equal measure.

This guide covers the court itself — its judges, courthouses, and local rules — along with the prosecutors who appear there, the numbers behind the sentencing docket, and how we defend cases in it. Elizabeth Franklin-Best is admitted to the bar of the District of Maryland, and the Fourth Circuit that reviews this court’s judgments is our home circuit. She is named a “Best Lawyer” in Appellate Practice by Best Lawyers in America 2026 and ranked by Chambers USA 2026 for Litigation: White-Collar Crime & Government Investigations — credentials matched to a district where one sentencing in five is a fraud case. This page is part of our federal courts directory.

If a grand jury subpoena, a search warrant, or an indictment has put you in this court, we offer a paid, one-hour initial consultation to assess the case against you and map the options.

Quick Answer: District of Maryland

Question	Answer
What court handles federal cases in Maryland?	The U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland — one district for the whole state, sitting in Baltimore (Northern Division) and Greenbelt (Southern Division).
How many judges does the court have?	Congress authorizes ten district judgeships under 28 U.S.C. § 133; as of mid-2026, Chief Judge George L. Russell III leads a bench of fourteen district judges in active service, counting senior judges.
Who prosecutes federal cases there?	The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Maryland — led as of mid-2026 by U.S. Attorney Kelly O. Hayes, with more than 200 personnel in Baltimore and Greenbelt.
What dominates the docket?	FY2024: 449 people sentenced — firearms 24.1%, drug trafficking 21.8%, and fraud, theft, or embezzlement 20.5% (against 8.6% nationally).
Which circuit hears appeals?	The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit in Richmond — our home circuit — which also reviews judgments from Virginia, West Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina.
Where are post-conviction motions filed?	A § 2255 motion attacking a District of Maryland conviction comes back to this district; compassionate release goes to the sentencing judge.
Is the firm admitted in the District of Maryland?	Yes — Elizabeth Franklin-Best holds bar admission in this court itself, so no pro hac vice motion is needed for us to appear.
How do consultations work?	We start with a paid, one-hour initial consultation that takes a hard look at the charges, the evidence, and the realistic paths forward.

Key Takeaways

• Maryland is a single federal district: every federal prosecution in the state lands in either Baltimore or Greenbelt.
• Ten authorized judgeships under 28 U.S.C. § 133; Chief Judge George L. Russell III leads the court as of mid-2026.
• FY2024 sentencings: 449 total — 24.1% firearms, 21.8% drug trafficking, 20.5% fraud, theft, or embezzlement.
• The fraud share of this docket runs more than double the national figure, so white-collar defense capability matters here.
• Murder and racketeering sentencings appear at several times the national rate, a product of Baltimore-focused federal violent-crime initiatives.
• Guilty pleas resolved 96.9% of FY2024 cases; only fourteen went to trial — early-stage strategy usually decides the outcome.
• A criminal notice of appeal here is due 14 days after entry of judgment, and the Fourth Circuit in Richmond takes the case from there.
• Section 2255 motions, compassionate-release motions, and other post-judgment filings return to the District of Maryland bench.
• Elizabeth Franklin-Best is a member of this court’s bar, and the Fourth Circuit that reviews its judgments is the firm’s home circuit.

The District of Maryland at a Glance

Maryland has never been carved into multiple federal districts. One court serves the entire state, with its Northern Division at 101 West Lombard Street in Baltimore and its Southern Division at 6500 Cherrywood Lane in Greenbelt; the court also lists a Salisbury location on the Eastern Shore for limited proceedings. Most criminal matters are heard in Baltimore or Greenbelt, and the two courthouses run parallel criminal calendars week in and week out.

Across the street from each courthouse sits the U.S. Attorney’s Office that drives the docket, organized — like the court — into Baltimore and Greenbelt offices. When a judgment is appealed, the case travels to Richmond, because this district belongs to the Fourth Circuit — for our firm, the most familiar appellate court in the country, since it also reviews the South Carolina district where we are based.

The Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure govern here as everywhere, but the district layers its own Local Rules and standing orders on top of them — Local Rule 301 defines what the magistrate judges handle, and Local Rule 201.1.b sets the terms for out-of-district counsel appearing in criminal cases. Knowing those local mechanics is part of practicing in this court, not an afterthought.

The Bench: Who Sits in Baltimore and Greenbelt

Congress authorizes ten district judgeships for the District of Maryland under 28 U.S.C. § 133. As of mid-2026, the court’s own roster lists fourteen district judges in active service once senior judges are counted, led by Chief Judge George L. Russell III. Senior judges in this district continue to carry criminal caseloads, which means the judge assigned to a new indictment may bring decades of sentencing history to the bench.

The magistrate corps is unusually deep. The court is authorized eight full-time magistrate judges plus one part-time position, and its mid-2026 roster includes recalled magistrate judges as well, headed by Chief Magistrate Judge Timothy J. Sullivan. Local Rule 301 assigns their duties — initial appearances, detention hearings, and much of the pretrial machinery of a criminal case run through their courtrooms before a district judge ever takes the bench.

When we take on a District of Maryland matter, we study the assigned judge’s published opinions, sentencing decisions in comparable cases, and chambers practices — never to handicap a result, but because advocacy written for the specific judge who will read it carries more weight than advocacy written for no one in particular.

Enforcement Priorities: Fraud, Firearms, and Public Corruption

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Maryland — led as of mid-2026 by U.S. Attorney Kelly O. Hayes — fields more than 200 personnel organized into Criminal, Civil, and Administrative Divisions, split between Baltimore and Greenbelt offices that mirror the court’s two divisions. Main Justice components, including the Criminal Division’s Fraud Section, regularly try cases here alongside the local office.

The U.S. Sentencing Commission’s FY2024 statistical packet for the district shows where that manpower goes. Of 449 people sentenced, 108 were firearms cases (24.1%, against 13.2% nationally), 98 were drug-trafficking cases (21.8%), and 92 were fraud, theft, or embezzlement cases (20.5%, against 8.6% nationally). Two outliers stand out: murder accounted for 6.7% of sentencings — roughly eight times the national share — reflecting racketeering-driven prosecutions of Baltimore violence, and tax cases, at 2.9%, ran about four times the national rate. Guilty pleas resolved 96.9% of cases; fourteen went to trial.

The white-collar side of that docket regularly makes national news. In June 2026, a Baltimore federal jury convicted the operator of the AeroVanti private-jet club on six wire-fraud counts for diverting roughly $15 million in members’ upfront aircraft payments; he faces a separate Medicare-fraud and money-laundering indictment set for trial in October 2026 (justice.gov). The office’s public-corruption tradition includes the prosecution of former Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh, sentenced to three years in federal prison on fraud-conspiracy and tax charges arising from her Healthy Holly book sales (justice.gov). Pandemic-relief fraud remains live as well — a former federal-agency employee pled guilty to CARES Act fraud here in June 2026, and because Congress stretched the statute of limitations for PPP and EIDL fraud to ten years, relief-program conduct from 2020 and 2021 can still be charged today.

For anyone whose investigation touches these priorities, the defense is offense-specific. Our guides to federal fraud charges, health care fraud, public corruption, and federal firearms offenses go deeper on each.

Federal Criminal Cases in the District

No two District of Maryland prosecutions look alike — the same courtrooms hear white-collar indictments and drug conspiracies, gang racketeering and tax counts, often on the same morning’s calendar. What every case shares is its structure.

Federal agents typically work a Maryland case long before any charge appears — a target letter or grand jury subpoena is often the first visible sign. An indictment follows, then the initial appearance and arraignment (usually before a magistrate judge), pretrial motions and discovery, and resolution by plea agreement or trial, with sentencing after any conviction. Our federal criminal process guide explains what happens — and what is at stake — at each of those stages.

In a district where 96.9% of cases end in pleas, the quality of the plea — which counts survive, what Guidelines facts are stipulated, which arguments are preserved — is often the whole ballgame. We litigate the motions worth litigating, negotiate from a record built with sentencing in mind, and keep trial genuinely available for the cases that warrant it.

Applied Insight: Only fourteen federal cases went to trial in all of Maryland in fiscal year 2024. Prosecutors know those odds, and first plea offers tend to be priced to them. The way to move the number is to surface weaknesses the government has not priced in — suppression exposure, cooperator credibility, loss-amount disputes — early enough that they change the calculation rather than decorate it.

Appeals and Post-Conviction Matters

Judgment in Baltimore or Greenbelt is not the end of the road. Review belongs to the Fourth Circuit in Richmond, and the window is short — fourteen days from entry of judgment to file the criminal notice of appeal, a deadline we calendar before sentencing even occurs. Direct appeals from this district are core work for our firm.

Fourth Circuit law frames what comes after the appeal, too. On compassionate release, United States v. Muhammad, 16 F.4th 126 (4th Cir. 2021), holds that § 3582(c)(1)(A)’s exhaustion requirement is a non-jurisdictional claim-processing rule, and that a prisoner may file thirty days after asking the warden whether or not the warden ever answers. The circuit’s expansive United States v. McCoy, 981 F.3d 271 (4th Cir. 2020), which had allowed courts to treat nonretroactive changes in sentencing law as extraordinary and compelling reasons, did not survive 2026: the Supreme Court’s Rutherford v. United States (May 28, 2026) forecloses that theory and channels attacks on a conviction or sentence into § 2255. And for the quarter of this docket that is firearms cases, United States v. Hunt, 123 F.4th 697 (4th Cir. 2024), upheld the felon-in-possession statute against a post-Bruen Second Amendment challenge — though preserving the issue still matters, because that question remains contested in other circuits.

The forum rules are simple even when the law is not: post-conviction relief returns to the district of conviction, so a motion under 28 U.S.C. § 2255 attacking a Maryland judgment is filed back in this court, and a compassionate release motion goes to the sentencing judge. The Fourth Circuit decided 572 compassionate-release motions in FY2025 — more than any other circuit — granting 81, a 14.2% rate against 14.1% nationally. The District of Maryland itself was the most receptive court in the circuit: of 95 motions decided here, judges granted 30, a 31.6% rate that more than doubled the circuit and national figures and led every district in the Fourth Circuit. This is the heart of our practice, and we bring it in Maryland with the same circuit law that governs our home district.

How the Firm Practices in This Court

Our admission here is direct. Elizabeth Franklin-Best is a member of the District of Maryland’s own bar — one of seven federal district courts where she holds standing admission — so we enter an appearance the day we are retained. Counsel admitted elsewhere must instead move for pro hac vice admission under Local Rule 201.1.b, which permits an attorney in good standing with another court’s bar to appear in a criminal case on motion and a $100 fee. It is a workable rule; we simply never need it in this district.

There is a home-court dimension as well. Appeals from Maryland go to the Fourth Circuit — the same court of appeals that sits over our South Carolina base — so the appellate judges, briefing rules, and argument rhythms governing a Maryland case are the ones we work under every week of the year. That is where our record runs deepest: across more than 330 federal proceedings and over 100 federal appeals, Elizabeth Franklin-Best has appeared in all twelve federal circuits and at the U.S. Supreme Court, with the heaviest concentration — more than 90 dockets — in the Fourth Circuit that reviews this district. She is the author of Reversing Your Criminal Conviction, a treatise on post-conviction litigation.

From a first appearance before a Greenbelt magistrate judge to a § 2255 motion filed in Baltimore years later, we treat a Maryland case as one continuous matter: investigation-stage counsel, trial-level defense, sentencing advocacy grounded in the district’s own data, direct appeal, and post-conviction litigation — each stage handled so the next one is preserved. Clients in nearby districts can compare our pages on the Eastern District of Virginia and the District of South Carolina, our home court.

Frequently Asked Questions

Talk With a Federal Criminal Defense Lawyer

Whether your matter is just beginning in Greenbelt, heading to sentencing in Baltimore, or already final and bound for the Fourth Circuit, the next step is the same: a paid, one-hour initial consultation in which we evaluate the record and lay out what can realistically be done.