Every federal criminal case in New Hampshire — wherever in the state it arises — converges on one building: the Warren B. Rudman U.S. Courthouse at 55 Pleasant Street in Concord, home of the United States District Court for the District of New Hampshire. It is a small court with an outsized drug docket: nearly half of the people sentenced here in fiscal year 2024 were sentenced for drug trafficking. Federal charging, mandatory minimums, and the Sentencing Guidelines make this a fundamentally different arena than New Hampshire’s state courts, and defending a case here starts with knowing the difference.
In this guide we walk through the Concord courthouse and the judges who sit there, the U.S. Attorney’s Office a few doors down Pleasant Street, the docket the district actually runs, and how we defend clients in it through pro hac vice admission. Behind that work stand the credentials Elizabeth Franklin-Best brings to every federal matter: recognition in Best Lawyers in America 2026 as a “Best Lawyer” in Appellate Practice and a Chambers USA 2026 ranking for Litigation: White-Collar Crime & Government Investigations. This page belongs to our federal courts directory.
If a federal case in Concord is on your horizon — an agent’s phone call, a search, a charge already filed — our paid, one-hour initial consultation is the place to get straight answers about what comes next.
Table of Contents
Quick Answer: District of New Hampshire
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| What court handles federal cases in New Hampshire? | The U.S. District Court for the District of New Hampshire — one statewide district, sitting at the Warren B. Rudman U.S. Courthouse, 55 Pleasant Street, Concord. |
| Who prosecutes federal cases there? | The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of New Hampshire, led as of mid-2026 by U.S. Attorney Erin Creegan, from offices at 53 Pleasant Street in Concord. |
| Which circuit hears appeals? | The First Circuit, sitting in Boston about 70 miles south — the smallest federal circuit, also covering Maine, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Puerto Rico. |
| Where are post-conviction motions filed? | Back in Concord — a Section 2255 motion or compassionate-release motion attacking a New Hampshire federal judgment is filed and decided in the District of New Hampshire. |
| Can the firm appear in the District of New Hampshire? | Yes. Pro hac vice admission lets us bring a nationwide federal defense, appellate, and post-conviction practice into the Rudman Courthouse case by case. |
Key Takeaways
- One courthouse hears every federal criminal case in New Hampshire: the Warren B. Rudman U.S. Courthouse in Concord.
- As of mid-2026 the court is led by Chief Judge Samantha D. Elliott, who became chief judge on November 1, 2025; two full-time magistrate judges handle pretrial proceedings.
- Drug trafficking dominated the district’s fiscal year 2024 docket at 45.8% of the 118 people sentenced — among the heaviest drug concentrations in the First Circuit (USSC data).
- Fraud, theft, and embezzlement made up another 15.3% of FY2024 sentencings — nearly double the national share — alongside firearms (9.3%) and child-exploitation cases.
- The U.S. Attorney’s Office under Erin Creegan prosecutes interstate fentanyl and pill conspiracies, child-exploitation stings, and sex-trafficking cases, often with Massachusetts-based supply chains.
- In drug cases, safety-valve relief from mandatory minimums now runs through the Supreme Court’s strict reading of 18 U.S.C. § 3553(f) in Pulsifer v. United States (2024).
- Appeals go to the First Circuit in Boston on a 14-day notice-of-appeal clock.
- Section 2255 and compassionate-release motions return to Concord — and First Circuit courts granted 25.0% of compassionate-release motions decided in FY2025, well above the 14.1% national rate.
- We appear in this district pro hac vice, pairing national federal experience with this court’s local rules and practice.
The District of New Hampshire at a Glance
The United States District Court for the District of New Hampshire is the federal trial court for the whole state, and unlike most districts it operates from a single courthouse: the Warren B. Rudman U.S. Courthouse at 55 Pleasant Street in Concord, named for the New Hampshire senator. A drug arrest in Nashua, a fraud investigation in Portsmouth, a firearms charge in the North Country — all of it is arraigned, litigated, tried, and sentenced in the same building.
The district belongs to the First Circuit, which reviews its judgments from Boston, and it shares the circuit with the District of Massachusetts to the south and the District of Maine to the east. That geography is not just trivia: a striking share of New Hampshire’s federal drug cases involve supply lines running up from Massachusetts, which means parallel investigations, cooperating witnesses across district lines, and venue questions worth examining.
Practice in Concord runs on the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure overlaid with the district’s own local rules and standing orders — filing through CM/ECF, scheduling conventions, and the division of labor between the district judges and the court’s two full-time magistrate judges. A court this size has institutional habits, and lawyers who respect them get more done with less friction.
The Bench: A New Chief Judge and a Close-Knit Court
New Hampshire has three authorized district judgeships under 28 U.S.C. § 133, and as of mid-2026 the court is led by Chief Judge Samantha D. Elliott, who became chief judge on November 1, 2025. The judges sitting on the court include Judges Paul J. Barbadoro, Joseph N. Laplante, Steven J. McAuliffe, and Landya B. McCafferty — a roster that carries decades of accumulated experience with this district’s distinctive docket, including several who have themselves served as chief judge.
Two full-time magistrate judges, Andrea K. Johnstone and Talesha L. Saint-Marc, conduct the initial appearances, arraignments, and detention hearings through which every Concord prosecution passes, and handle much of the pretrial motion work. In a one-courthouse district, the entire arc of a case unfolds before the same small set of judicial officers — and a lawyer’s reputation for straight dealing in that building is part of the client’s capital.
For defendants, the practical takeaway is consistency: New Hampshire’s federal judges see the district’s drug pipeline cases week in and week out, and they know the patterns — which makes thin, boilerplate defense work easy for them to spot, and careful, individualized advocacy stand out all the more.
Federal Criminal Cases in the District
No New England district leans harder into drug prosecutions than this one — within the First Circuit, only Puerto Rico’s drug share runs higher — but the docket is broader than fentanyl: fraud and white-collar cases run well above their national share here, and firearms and child-exploitation prosecutions are constants. Whatever the charge, the case follows the same federal sequence.
Most cases begin with an investigation by a federal agency, sometimes signaled by a target letter or a grand jury subpoena. Formal charges follow, typically by indictment. After an initial appearance and arraignment, the case proceeds through pretrial litigation and discovery, and is then resolved either by a negotiated plea agreement or by trial. A conviction is followed by sentencing under the federal framework. Our federal criminal process hub walks through each stage in detail.
Our work tracks that sequence with the district’s docket in mind: in a Concord drug case, that means attacking quantity attributions and conspiracy scope, litigating the searches and wiretaps that built the case, and positioning eligible clients for safety-valve relief from mandatory minimums; in a fraud case, it means contesting intent and loss before those numbers harden into a Guidelines range.
Applied Insight: New Hampshire’s federal drug cases are usually conspiracy cases, and conspiracy law is where the government’s leverage lives: a person who sold for a week can be charged alongside a ring that ran for years, with the quantity math to match. The single most consequential fight in a Concord drug prosecution is often not guilt or innocence but scope — what conduct, and how many grams, fairly belong to this defendant. That fight starts the day counsel gets involved, not at sentencing.
What Federal Prosecutors Pursue in New Hampshire
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of New Hampshire — led as of mid-2026 by U.S. Attorney Erin Creegan, a career Justice Department prosecutor confirmed by the Senate in December 2025, from offices at 53 Pleasant Street in Concord, two doors from the courthouse — runs Project Safe Childhood, Project Safe Neighborhoods, and an Elder Justice initiative, and has branded its violent-crime and drug work under a #CrimeFreeNH campaign. Its recent charging record shows the throughline: interstate drug conspiracies, child-exploitation cases, and sex-trafficking stings, including prosecutions built around Manchester hotels and social-media-marketed counterfeit pills.
The U.S. Sentencing Commission’s fiscal year 2024 packet makes the docket’s shape unmistakable. Of 118 people sentenced in the district, 45.8% were sentenced for drug trafficking — half again the 29.5% national share, and that figure excludes the additional drug-possession cases. Fraud, theft, and embezzlement contributed 15.3% (nearly double the national 8.6%), firearms 9.3%, and child-pornography offenses 5.1%. New Hampshire’s opioid crisis is written directly into these numbers.
For anyone facing a drug charge here, one Supreme Court decision matters enormously: Pulsifer v. United States, 601 U.S. 124 (2024), which adopted the government’s strict reading of the safety valve in 18 U.S.C. § 3553(f). Safety-valve relief — the main route under and around a mandatory minimum for lower-level, nonviolent defendants — now requires clearing each criminal-history condition on the statute’s checklist. In a district where nearly half the docket is drug trafficking, eligibility analysis under Pulsifer is day-one work, and it can change a case’s entire trajectory.
Trials are comparatively rare in Concord — 4 of the district’s 118 sentenced cases in fiscal year 2024, against a backdrop of 96.6% guilty pleas — but they happen, and recent ones have produced convictions in sex-trafficking prosecutions. The rarity cuts both ways: a defense team genuinely built for trial is conspicuous here, and that visibility has negotiating value.
Appeals and Post-Conviction Matters
A judgment entered in Concord can be tested in Boston: appeals from this district go to the First Circuit, on a notice of appeal generally due within fourteen days of the entry of judgment. Sentencing issues — Guidelines calculations, drug-quantity findings, the reasonableness of the sentence itself — are among the most commonly appealed questions from a docket like this one.
When the appeal ends, the road leads back to Pleasant Street: a motion under 28 U.S.C. § 2255 attacking a New Hampshire federal conviction is filed in this district, ordinarily before the sentencing judge, and the rest of the post-conviction toolbox — sentence-reduction motions, compassionate release under 18 U.S.C. § 3582(c)(1)(A) — runs through Concord as well. Since the Supreme Court’s Rutherford decision in May 2026, compassionate-release motions in this circuit can no longer be built on nonretroactive changes in sentencing law (the door the First Circuit’s Ruvalcaba decision had opened), but medical, age, and family grounds remain — and the First Circuit’s 25.0% grant rate in fiscal year 2025 was among the country’s highest. This record-driven work is our core practice, and it travels to Concord intact.
How the Firm Practices in This Court
Our route into the Rudman Courthouse is pro hac vice admission — the case-specific admission every federal district court extends to qualified outside counsel under its local rules. For clients, the mechanics are invisible; what they see is a defense team that practices federal criminal law everywhere bringing that experience to a single courtroom in Concord.
There is a real advantage in that national vantage point. The mandatory-minimum statutes, the safety valve as Pulsifer now defines it, the drug-quantity Guidelines — these are the same in Concord as in every other district, and we litigate them constantly. A practice that sees how districts across the country handle the same issues can spot the argument a purely local practice might not think to make.
Elizabeth Franklin-Best is admitted to the First Circuit and the U.S. Supreme Court and is the author of Reversing Your Criminal Conviction; appellate and post-conviction litigation is the spine of the practice. That spine is substantial: she has handled more than 330 federal matters, including over 100 appeals across all twelve federal circuits and cert-stage filings at the Supreme Court, a body of work that also earned her recognition in Best Lawyers in America 2026 for Appellate Practice and a Chambers USA 2026 ranking in Litigation: White-Collar Crime & Government Investigations. In a district whose sentencings so often turn on drug quantity and criminal-history findings, that appellate eye matters at the trial level — objections preserved in the Rudman Courthouse become arguments that can win in Boston.
Frequently Asked Questions
What court handles federal criminal cases in New Hampshire?
All of New Hampshire’s federal criminal cases are heard by the United States District Court for the District of New Hampshire at the Warren B. Rudman U.S. Courthouse, 55 Pleasant Street in Concord — the district’s only courthouse.
Who prosecutes federal crimes in the District of New Hampshire?
The United States Attorney’s Office for the District of New Hampshire, located at 53 Pleasant Street in Concord and led as of mid-2026 by U.S. Attorney Erin Creegan. Its criminal docket leans heavily toward interstate drug-trafficking conspiracies, child-exploitation and sex-trafficking cases, and fraud.
Which appeals court covers the District of New Hampshire?
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit in Boston, the smallest federal circuit, which also covers Maine, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Puerto Rico. The notice of appeal in a criminal case is generally due within 14 days of the entry of judgment.
How does a federal criminal case proceed in the District of New Hampshire?
Cases typically begin with an investigation and an indictment, followed by an initial appearance before one of the district’s two magistrate judges in Concord, pretrial litigation and discovery, and resolution by plea or trial, with sentencing under the federal Guidelines framework. In fiscal year 2024, 96.6% of sentenced cases in this district ended in guilty pleas and 4 went to trial.
Can an out-of-state lawyer represent me in the District of New Hampshire?
Yes. The District of New Hampshire admits qualified outside counsel pro hac vice under its local rules, as every federal district court does. Federal criminal law is national; what varies locally is practice and procedure, which experienced federal counsel study before filing anything in a new court.
Does the firm handle federal cases in the District of New Hampshire?
Yes. We defend clients in the District of New Hampshire through pro hac vice admission and handle First Circuit appeals and post-conviction matters arising from Concord judgments, including Section 2255 and compassionate-release motions. Every engagement opens with a paid, one-hour initial consultation.
Why are so many New Hampshire federal cases drug cases?
In fiscal year 2024, 45.8% of the 118 people sentenced in this district were sentenced for drug trafficking, far above the 29.5% national share. The district sits at the receiving end of interstate fentanyl and counterfeit-pill supply chains, many running up from Massachusetts, and federal task forces charge those networks as conspiracies.
What is the safety valve, and does it apply in New Hampshire drug cases?
The safety valve in 18 U.S.C. § 3553(f) allows qualifying lower-level, nonviolent drug defendants to be sentenced below a mandatory minimum. In Pulsifer v. United States (2024), the Supreme Court adopted a strict reading of the statute’s criminal-history conditions, so each condition must be independently satisfied. Safety-valve eligibility analysis is among the first things we do in any Concord drug case.
Who are the judges of the District of New Hampshire?
As of mid-2026, Chief Judge Samantha D. Elliott leads the court — she became chief judge on November 1, 2025 — and the bench includes Judges Paul J. Barbadoro, Joseph N. Laplante, Steven J. McAuliffe, and Landya B. McCafferty. Magistrate Judges Andrea K. Johnstone and Talesha L. Saint-Marc handle most pretrial proceedings.
Talk With a Federal Criminal Defense Lawyer
A drug-conspiracy charge in Concord, a mandatory minimum that may or may not actually apply, an appeal from a New Hampshire sentence, a Section 2255 deadline approaching — these are solvable problems when they are analyzed early and honestly. Our paid, one-hour initial consultation exists to do exactly that analysis.