The United States District Court for the District of New Jersey runs one of the heaviest criminal dockets in the Third Circuit — 830 people were sentenced there in fiscal year 2024 alone — across courthouses in Newark, Trenton, and Camden. It is a court where the government’s resources are deep: the U.S. Attorney’s Office that prosecutes here serves one of the most populous federal districts in the country and maintains specialized units for healthcare fraud, securities fraud, money laundering, and cybercrime.
This page explains what a defendant should understand about this district: the three vicinages and the bench that staffs them, the prosecuting office and its enforcement priorities, the recent case law that matters here, and the way we take on New Jersey federal matters. Our principal attorney, Elizabeth Franklin-Best, holds a Best Lawyers in America 2026 “Best Lawyer” recognition in Appellate Practice, and the firm carries a Chambers USA 2026 ranking in Litigation: White-Collar Crime & Government Investigations. You are reading one entry in our federal courts directory; the parent Third Circuit page covers the appellate court above this district.
When federal agents, a subpoena, or an indictment out of Newark, Trenton, or Camden enters your life, the smart first move is a structured review of where you stand. We provide that through a paid, one-hour initial consultation.
Table of Contents
Quick Answer: District of New Jersey
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| Where are New Jersey federal criminal cases heard? | In the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey, a statewide court that sits in three vicinages: Newark, Trenton, and Camden. |
| How many judges serve the district? | Congress allocates the district 17 judgeships under 28 U.S.C. § 133 — among the largest district benches in the nation — led as of June 2026 by Chief Judge Renée Marie Bumb, with magistrate judges in each vicinage. |
| Who is the prosecutor? | The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of New Jersey, led by U.S. Attorney Robert Frazer, whose nine-unit Criminal Division includes a dedicated Health Care Fraud and Opioid Enforcement Unit and an Economic Crimes Unit. |
| What court reviews convictions from this district? | The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in Philadelphia — the same circuit that covers Delaware, Pennsylvania, and the Virgin Islands. |
| Where does a Section 2255 motion get filed? | In the District of New Jersey, because collateral attacks are filed in the court that imposed the conviction and sentence. |
| Do you appear in New Jersey federal court? | We do — through pro hac vice admission under Local Civil Rule 101.1(c), which the district’s local rules apply to criminal cases, with New Jersey counsel of record. |
| How does an engagement begin? | With a paid, one-hour initial consultation: we study the charging papers or subpoena, then walk you through exposure, defenses, and timing. |
Key Takeaways
- One statewide federal district serves New Jersey, operating through three vicinages — Newark, Trenton, and Camden — under 17 congressionally authorized judgeships (28 U.S.C. § 133).
- Chief Judge Renée Marie Bumb leads the bench as of June 2026.
- FY2024 Sentencing Commission data count 830 people sentenced here; fraud, theft, and embezzlement made up 17.3% of them — double the 8.6% national share.
- Bribery and corruption sentencings also ran roughly triple the national rate (1.9% versus 0.6%), consistent with the district’s long public-corruption history.
- The USAO’s nine-unit Criminal Division includes a dedicated Health Care Fraud and Opioid Enforcement Unit, an Economic Crimes Unit, a Cybercrime Unit, and a Bank Integrity, Recovery, and Money Laundering Unit.
- The Supreme Court’s reversal of this district’s own Bridgegate convictions in Kelly v. United States still defines the property limits of federal fraud here.
- Direct appeals run to the Third Circuit on a 14-day notice-of-appeal clock.
- Collateral relief — § 2255, compassionate release — comes back to the District of New Jersey for decision.
- We take New Jersey federal cases through pro hac vice admission under Local Civil Rule 101.1(c), with local counsel of record.
The District of New Jersey at a Glance
New Jersey’s 21 counties form a single federal judicial district, but the court does its work in three places. The district operates through vicinages — its term for the Newark, Trenton, and Camden court locations — and a case is typically litigated in the vicinage tied to where the alleged conduct arose. A North Jersey wire-fraud defendant will usually answer in Newark; a South Jersey healthcare case is more likely to be heard in Camden.
The bench matches the caseload. Congress has authorized 17 district judgeships for New Jersey under 28 U.S.C. § 133 — among the largest complements in the federal system — and as of June 2026 the court is led by Chief Judge Renée Marie Bumb. Each vicinage is also staffed with magistrate judges who handle the front end of criminal cases: initial appearances, arraignments, bail and detention contests, and substantial pretrial management. For a defendant, that means the first courtroom you see in a New Jersey federal case will almost always belong to a magistrate judge.
Procedure follows the national Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, overlaid with the district’s combined local civil and criminal rules — a structure with real consequences, since several local civil rules (including the attorney-admission rules) are expressly made applicable to criminal cases. Appeals from all three vicinages travel to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit across the Delaware River in Philadelphia.
Healthcare Fraud, Corruption, and the Government’s Bench Strength
Few U.S. Attorney’s Offices are built out the way New Jersey’s is. Led by U.S. Attorney Robert Frazer, the office supervises roughly 155 federal prosecutors across Newark, Camden, and Trenton. Its Criminal Division — the office’s largest component — fields nine specialized units, including a Health Care Fraud and Opioid Enforcement Unit that prosecutes kickback schemes under the Anti-Kickback Statute and EKRA alongside parallel False Claims Act enforcement; an Economic Crimes Unit handling securities fraud, insider trading, and market manipulation; a Cybercrime Unit; and a Bank Integrity, Recovery, and Money Laundering Unit aimed at Bank Secrecy Act violations and international laundering networks. Public corruption is significant enough here that the office assigns it to a separate component outside the Criminal Division altogether.
The district’s sentencing data mirror those priorities. In the Sentencing Commission’s FY2024 figures, fraud, theft, and embezzlement accounted for 17.3% of New Jersey’s 830 sentencings — double the 8.6% national share — while bribery and corruption cases ran at three times the national rate. With so much of the pharmaceutical and healthcare industry headquartered in the state, billing, kickback, and clinical-relationship cases are a permanent feature of this docket, not an occasional event.
The recent docket shows both the scale and the variety: in May 2026, a Newark judge sentenced the former CEO of a publicly traded healthcare services company to five years in prison in a $212 million securities-fraud conspiracy, with restitution exceeding $125 million, and the office has announced a steady run of healthcare sentencings — compounded-medication kickbacks, durable-medical-equipment and genetic-testing schemes among them. Our pages on federal fraud defense, public corruption defense, and money laundering defense cover the underlying statutes in detail.
Fraud and Corruption Law After Kelly, Ciminelli, and Snyder
No district has shaped modern fraud doctrine quite like this one. In Kelly v. United States, 590 U.S. 391 (2020), the Supreme Court unanimously threw out the District of New Jersey’s “Bridgegate” convictions, holding that wire fraud and federal-program fraud protect money and property only — a scheme aimed at an exercise of regulatory power is not federal fraud. Ciminelli v. United States, 598 U.S. 306 (2023), extended that property-rights discipline by abolishing the right-to-control theory, while Kousisis v. United States, 605 U.S. 114 (2025), preserved fraudulent-inducement liability where materiality is satisfied. Together these cases give New Jersey defendants a genuine threshold argument: does the indictment actually allege a scheme to obtain property?
For the district’s substantial corruption docket, Snyder v. United States, 603 U.S. 1 (2024), narrowed 18 U.S.C. § 666 to bribes — agreements struck before the official act — and excluded after-the-fact gratuities. And at sentencing, the Third Circuit’s text-first holding on intended loss in United States v. Banks continues to frame loss disputes for pre-November 2024 conduct, even after the Sentencing Commission codified intended loss into §2B1.1 through Amendment 827. These are not abstractions: in a district that sentences more fraud defendants than almost any other in the circuit, each of these rulings is a live tool.
Federal Criminal Cases in the District
White-collar work may define the district’s reputation, but volume tells a fuller story: drug trafficking was 39.2% of FY2024 sentencings and firearms cases another 19.6%, alongside the white-collar and drug dockets. Whatever brings a client here, the procedural path through a New Jersey federal case is predictable enough to plan around.
It usually starts quietly — agents working a file for months before a target letter or grand jury subpoena announces the investigation. Charging comes by indictment in the relevant vicinage, followed by an initial appearance and arraignment before a magistrate judge, who will also decide any detention fight. Discovery and motion practice come next, then resolution — a plea agreement in the great majority of cases, trial where the government’s proof deserves to be tested — and, after any conviction, Guidelines sentencing. Stage-by-stage detail lives in our federal criminal process hub.
Our role across that arc is to keep the defense ahead of the case instead of behind it — testing the indictment against Kelly and Ciminelli at the motion stage, contesting loss figures and enhancements before they harden into a Guidelines range, and preserving every appellate issue as we go, because the Third Circuit reviews what the record contains, not what it should have contained.
Applied Insight: In a district with specialized fraud and healthcare units, the prosecutors across the table have usually lived with the file for a year or more before charging. The defense cannot close that gap after indictment — which is why the subpoena or the first agent contact, not the arraignment, is the real starting gun in a New Jersey federal case.
Appeals and Post-Conviction Matters
Kelly is the proof that New Jersey federal convictions can be undone — but only by lawyers who preserve the issues and press them up the chain. The first link in that chain is the direct appeal to the Third Circuit, and it opens with a hard deadline: in a criminal case the notice of appeal is generally due 14 days from entry of judgment.
After the direct appeal, the fight returns home. A § 2255 motion challenging a New Jersey federal conviction is decided by the District of New Jersey, and the same is true of compassionate release and other post-conviction remedies. One 2026 development matters for anyone weighing those options: under the Supreme Court’s decision in Rutherford v. United States, nonretroactive changes in sentencing law no longer support compassionate release, so claims attacking the conviction or sentence belong in a § 2255 motion, properly framed. This appellate and collateral work is the heart of what we do, and it depends on the record and the law — not on geography.
How We Handle New Jersey Federal Cases
Admission is the easy part. The District of New Jersey admits outside attorneys pro hac vice under Local Civil Rule 101.1(c) — a rule the district expressly applies to criminal matters — on motion of New Jersey counsel, who remains counsel of record. We pair with respected local counsel in the appropriate vicinage, and the client gets both: our federal litigation depth and a New Jersey lawyer who knows the building.
The harder part — the part worth hiring for — is the substance. New Jersey federal cases are won or lost on federal law: the elements of the fraud statutes after Kelly and Ciminelli, the scope of § 666 after Snyder, Guidelines loss after Banks and Amendment 827, and the procedural rules that are identical from Camden to Anchorage. That body of law is our daily work.
Elizabeth Franklin-Best’s bar admissions span the U.S. Supreme Court and every one of the twelve federal circuit courts of appeals; she wrote Reversing Your Criminal Conviction on post-conviction practice, and she has built the firm around trial-level defense, direct appeals, and collateral litigation. Across her career she has handled more than 330 federal proceedings, including over 100 federal appeals in courts spanning all twelve circuits and the certiorari stage of the Supreme Court, the depth a high-volume district like New Jersey, with its specialized fraud and corruption units, can require. That is the experience we bring to a Newark, Trenton, or Camden courtroom.
Frequently Asked Questions
What court hears federal criminal cases in New Jersey?
The U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey hears every federal criminal case in the state. It is one statewide district that holds court in three vicinages — Newark, Trenton, and Camden — and a case is generally litigated in the vicinage connected to where the alleged conduct occurred.
What is a vicinage in the District of New Jersey?
Vicinage is the district’s term for its three court locations: Newark, Trenton, and Camden. Each vicinage has its own courthouse, district judges, and magistrate judges, but all three are part of the same statewide federal district operating under the same rules.
How many federal judges does New Jersey have?
Congress authorizes 17 district judgeships for the District of New Jersey under 28 U.S.C. § 133 — one of the largest allocations in the country. As of June 2026 the court is led by Chief Judge Renée Marie Bumb, and magistrate judges in each vicinage handle initial appearances, detention hearings, and much of the pretrial process.
Who prosecutes federal cases in New Jersey?
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of New Jersey, led by U.S. Attorney Robert Frazer, is one of the busiest in the nation, with offices in Newark, Trenton, and Camden. Its Criminal Division runs nine specialized units — including a dedicated Health Care Fraud and Opioid Enforcement Unit and an Economic Crimes Unit — and public corruption is handled by a separate component of the office.
Why are healthcare fraud cases so common in New Jersey federal court?
Much of the pharmaceutical and healthcare industry is headquartered in New Jersey, and prosecutors there maintain a unit devoted to healthcare fraud, kickbacks, and opioid enforcement, often running criminal and civil False Claims Act investigations in parallel. In FY2024, fraud, theft, and embezzlement made up 17.3% of the district’s sentencings — double the national share.
Which appeals court reviews District of New Jersey convictions?
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, which sits in Philadelphia and also covers Delaware, Pennsylvania, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. The notice of appeal in a criminal case is generally due within 14 days of the entry of judgment — and New Jersey’s own Bridgegate case, reversed unanimously by the Supreme Court, shows how much appellate review can matter.
How does a federal criminal case proceed in the District of New Jersey?
An investigation — often signaled by a target letter or grand jury subpoena — leads to an indictment returned in the appropriate vicinage. A magistrate judge conducts the initial appearance and arraignment and decides detention; the case then moves through discovery and pretrial motions before a district judge and resolves by plea or trial, with Guidelines sentencing after any conviction.
Can an out-of-state lawyer appear in New Jersey federal court?
Yes. The district admits outside attorneys pro hac vice under Local Civil Rule 101.1(c), which its local rules make applicable to criminal cases, on a motion filed by New Jersey counsel who remains counsel of record. The arrangement is routine, and the substantive law in the case is federal and national.
Does the firm take District of New Jersey cases?
We do. Elizabeth Franklin-Best, P.C. represents clients in Newark, Trenton, and Camden through pro hac vice admission with New Jersey local counsel — federal trial defense, direct appeals to the Third Circuit, Section 2255 motions, and compassionate-release litigation. Engagements begin with a paid, one-hour initial consultation.
Speak With a Federal Defense Lawyer About Your New Jersey Case
A healthcare-fraud subpoena in Newark, a corruption inquiry in Trenton, a sentencing or § 2255 question out of Camden — each calls for a different strategy, and all of them reward early, organized analysis. Our paid, one-hour initial consultation exists to deliver exactly that before you commit to a path. Defendants with matters elsewhere in the circuit can review our District of Delaware and Eastern District of Pennsylvania pages.