The Eastern District of New York sits at the nation’s front door. Its territory — Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island, and all of Long Island — holds more than eight million people and major international air and seaports, and the federal docket shows it: organized-crime and counterespionage prosecutions, cross-border money laundering, and digital-asset fraud move through the Brooklyn federal courthouse alongside one of the country’s most distinctive white-collar caseloads. Facing charges in this district means facing prosecutors accustomed to cases that span continents.
Below we cover the court in detail — the Brooklyn and Central Islip courthouses, the fifteen-judgeship bench, the joint local criminal rules shared with Manhattan’s federal court, the U.S. Attorney’s Office and its enforcement record, and what the district’s sentencing numbers reveal — followed by how our firm takes on EDNY matters. Elizabeth Franklin-Best, P.C. litigates federal criminal cases, appeals, and post-conviction motions across the country and is admitted pro hac vice for cases in the Eastern District of New York. This page belongs to our federal courts directory.
If agents have made an arrest in Brooklyn, served a subpoena on Long Island, or unsealed charges naming you or your business, we offer a paid, one-hour initial consultation to take stock of the case and chart the next moves.
Table of Contents
Quick Answer: Eastern District of New York
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| What does the Eastern District of New York cover? | Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island plus Nassau and Suffolk counties on Long Island — more than eight million people — with courthouses at 225 Cadman Plaza East in Brooklyn and 100 Federal Plaza in Central Islip. |
| Who prosecutes federal cases there? | The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York, led as of mid-2026 by U.S. Attorney Joseph Nocella, Jr.; it runs one of DOJ’s most active national-security programs alongside a heavy financial-crime docket. |
| How is the bench structured? | Fifteen authorized district judgeships under 28 U.S.C. § 133, with Chief Judge Margo K. Brodie presiding alongside senior district judges and magistrate judges. |
| Which circuit hears appeals? | The Second Circuit, across the East River at 40 Foley Square in Manhattan; the criminal notice-of-appeal window is generally 14 days from judgment. |
| Where are post-conviction motions filed? | A Section 2255 motion contesting an EDNY conviction is filed in the EDNY itself — the sentencing court keeps jurisdiction over the collateral attack. |
| What is the first step with the firm? | A paid, one-hour initial consultation; for an EDNY engagement, admission then proceeds pro hac vice under the court’s rules. |
Key Takeaways
- The EDNY covers Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island, Nassau, and Suffolk — and with JFK Airport and major seaports inside its lines, its docket is unusually international.
- Court sits in Brooklyn (225 Cadman Plaza East) and Central Islip (100 Federal Plaza) — the latter, completed in 2000, is the second-largest courthouse in the country.
- Congress authorizes 15 EDNY district judgeships under 28 U.S.C. § 133; Chief Judge Margo K. Brodie presides as of mid-2026.
- USSC FY2024 data: 727 people sentenced — drug trafficking 27.6 percent, fraud/theft/embezzlement 17.9 percent (more than double the 8.6 percent national share), and money laundering 7.2 percent.
- The U.S. Attorney’s Office, under Joseph Nocella, Jr., pairs one of DOJ’s most active national-security programs with market-manipulation, securities-fraud, health-care-fraud, and money-laundering prosecutions.
- Recent public outcomes include Genaro García Luna’s 460-month sentence (October 2024) and the SafeMoon CEO’s 100-month crypto-fraud sentence (February 2026).
- Criminal practice runs on the joint EDNY/SDNY local rules (amended effective January 2, 2026) plus division-of-business rules and judges’ individual practices; appeals go to the Second Circuit on Rule 4(b)’s 14-day clock.
- Section 2255 motions return to the EDNY; our firm handles trial, appellate, and collateral matters here through pro hac vice admission.
The Eastern District of New York at a Glance
The United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York is one of four federal trial courts in New York State, created by Congress in 1865 when it was carved out of the original New York district. It takes in three of New York City’s five boroughs — Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island — together with Nassau and Suffolk counties, and it holds court in downtown Brooklyn and in Central Islip on Long Island.
Prosecutions here belong to the United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York — an office whose docket profile we break down below. Appellate review belongs to the Second Circuit, which sits in Manhattan; a short subway ride separates the Brooklyn courthouse from the court that will scrutinize its judgments.
What sets this district apart is geography: JFK International Airport and some of the nation’s busiest port facilities sit inside its boundaries, making the EDNY a natural venue for smuggling, sanctions-adjacent, and transnational financial cases. Procedurally, the court applies the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure together with local rules it shares jointly with the Southern District of New York — a rare two-district rulebook — supplemented by its own division-of-business rules and each judge’s individual practices.
Two Courthouses, One District: Brooklyn and Central Islip
The district’s principal courthouse stands at 225 Cadman Plaza East in Brooklyn’s civic center, beside the Brooklyn Heights Historic District. Most of the district’s criminal calendar runs through this building, and the Metropolitan Detention Center — the federal jail that houses pretrial detainees for the New York City area — also sits in Brooklyn, inside the district’s borders.
The Long Island courthouse at 100 Federal Plaza in Central Islip is a landmark in its own right: designed by architect Richard Meier and completed in 2000, it is the second-largest courthouse in the country and the largest structure on Long Island, housing the district court, the bankruptcy court, pretrial services, probation, the U.S. Marshals, and U.S. Attorney’s offices under one roof. Cases arising in Nassau and Suffolk counties are generally heard there, with assignment between the two courthouses governed by the court’s division-of-business rules.
Congress has authorized fifteen district judgeships for the EDNY under 28 U.S.C. § 133, and Chief Judge Margo K. Brodie leads the court as of mid-2026, with a deep roster of senior district judges and magistrate judges carrying substantial portions of the docket; Vera M. Scanlon has served as the district’s chief magistrate judge since May 2025. Magistrate judges conduct the initial presentments and arraignments that open most criminal cases, so the first courtroom a defendant sees in Brooklyn or Central Islip is usually a magistrate judge’s — and bail is often decided there before the assigned district judge ever takes the bench.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office: International Crime, Crypto, and Fraud
The United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York is led, as of mid-2026, by U.S. Attorney Joseph Nocella, Jr. The office describes its national-security program — spanning international and domestic terrorism, weapons proliferation, counterespionage, and cybersecurity — as among the Justice Department’s most active, and its white-collar practice reaches market manipulation, corporate and securities fraud, health care fraud, mortgage fraud, money laundering, and tax evasion, alongside organized crime and international narcotics enforcement.
The district’s recent marquee prosecutions illustrate that reach. Genaro García Luna, Mexico’s former Secretary of Public Security, was convicted at trial in Brooklyn and sentenced on October 16, 2024, to 460 months in prison and a $2 million fine for continuing-criminal-enterprise and cocaine-trafficking offenses and false statements. In August 2025, Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada García, a co-founder of the Sinaloa Cartel, pleaded guilty in this district to engaging in a continuing criminal enterprise and racketeering.
Digital-asset enforcement is the newest thread. In February 2026, the chief executive of the SafeMoon cryptocurrency venture was sentenced to 100 months in prison following his trial conviction in a multi-million-dollar crypto-fraud scheme. For anyone connected to a token project, exchange, or fund facing EDNY scrutiny, these prosecutions confirm that the government will charge digital-asset conduct under the traditional securities-fraud and wire-fraud playbook.
Federal Criminal Cases in the District
Alongside its international signature cases, the EDNY’s daily calendar covers the entire federal canon — white-collar offenses and fraud, drug and firearms prosecutions, racketeering, and immigration and trafficking offenses tied to the airports. Every one of those cases travels the same procedural road.
The arc starts with investigation — HSI at the ports and airports, the FBI in financial and organized-crime matters — and the first visible sign is often a target letter or grand jury subpoena. From there: indictment, presentment and arraignment before a magistrate judge in Brooklyn or Central Islip, pretrial motions and discovery, then a plea agreement or trial, and finally sentencing if there is a conviction. Stage-by-stage detail lives in our federal criminal process hub.
At each of those stages our job is to narrow the government’s case — probing how evidence gathered abroad reached a Brooklyn grand jury, holding laundering and fraud theories to their statutory limits, fighting detention, and keeping every viable issue preserved for the Second Circuit.
Applied Insight: So many EDNY cases cross borders — wires routed overseas, containers at the port, exchanges domiciled abroad — that venue, extraterritorial reach, and the provenance of foreign-gathered evidence deserve scrutiny from the very first review of discovery. Challenges that would be exotic in most districts are bread-and-butter defense work in this one.
Sentencing Patterns and the Law That Drives Them
According to the U.S. Sentencing Commission’s fiscal year 2024 packet for this district, 727 individuals were sentenced in the EDNY that year. Drug trafficking led at 27.6 percent, fraud, theft, and embezzlement followed at 17.9 percent — more than double the 8.6 percent national share — with firearms at 8.9 percent and money laundering at a striking 7.2 percent. That money-laundering concentration is the statistical fingerprint of a district whose cases so often involve moving value across borders.
Money-laundering charges under 18 U.S.C. §§ 1956 and 1957 have real doctrinal limits worth pressing. In United States v. Santos, 553 U.S. 507 (2008), the Supreme Court read “proceeds” to mean profits rather than gross receipts for the offense there — a defense victory Congress answered by writing a gross-receipts definition into § 1956(c)(9). And Cuellar v. United States, 553 U.S. 550 (2008), holds that secretly transporting cash is not transportation money laundering unless the purpose of the movement was to conceal the funds’ nature, location, source, ownership, or control. In a district that charges laundering as often as this one, those boundaries matter in case after case.
On the fraud side, the offense level rises or falls with the loss table in U.S.S.G. § 2B1.1, and the November 2024 amendment cycle (Amendment 827) moved the intended-loss rule out of commentary and into the guideline’s text. With 98 percent of sentenced federal defendants nationwide having pleaded guilty in fiscal year 2025, most EDNY financial cases are decided in charge negotiations and at sentencing — which is exactly where disciplined challenges to loss figures, role findings, and forfeiture demands earn their keep.
Appeals and Post-Conviction Matters
An EDNY judgment is reviewable by the Second Circuit, and Rule 4(b) gives a criminal defendant fourteen days from entry of judgment to notice the appeal. A 2026 panel decision, United States v. Harris (2d Cir. Jan. 14, 2026), confirms that the deadline operates as a claim-processing rule — the government can forfeit an untimeliness objection — but it is rigid once raised, so the only safe practice is to file within the window every time.
After the direct appeal, the fight returns to Brooklyn or Central Islip: a motion under 28 U.S.C. § 2255 attacking an EDNY conviction or sentence is filed in the EDNY, before the sentencing court. Our post-conviction and compassionate release practice covers this district as it does the rest of the country — collateral litigation is built on the trial record and federal law, which makes it the most portable work in criminal defense.
How the Firm Practices in This Court
When Elizabeth Franklin-Best, P.C. takes a case in the Eastern District of New York, admission is secured pro hac vice — the court-approved route by which qualified counsel from outside the district enter an appearance for a specific matter. In a district whose defendants are as international as its cases, judges here are long accustomed to admitting out-of-district and even foreign-coordinated defense teams.
Chambers USA 2026 ranks the firm for Litigation: White-Collar Crime & Government Investigations, and Best Lawyers in America 2026 honors Elizabeth Franklin-Best as a “Best Lawyer” in Appellate Practice. She is admitted before the United States Supreme Court and all twelve federal circuits — the Second Circuit among them — and wrote Reversing Your Criminal Conviction, the practitioner-oriented guide to overturning federal convictions. That appellate orientation rests on volume: she has appeared in more than 330 federal matters over her career, including over 100 appeals across all twelve circuits, and is admitted pro hac vice in courts from coast to coast — the kind of multi-jurisdiction footprint an internationally minded district like this one demands.
EDNY prosecutions are built to hold up on appeal; the defense should be too. From the first bail argument in Brooklyn or Central Islip through Second Circuit briefing and any § 2255 litigation that follows, we treat the record as the client’s most valuable asset — developed, protected, and ready for every stage of review.
Frequently Asked Questions
What area does the Eastern District of New York cover?
The district covers Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island plus Nassau and Suffolk counties on Long Island — more than eight million people. Court is held at 225 Cadman Plaza East in Brooklyn and at 100 Federal Plaza in Central Islip.
Who prosecutes federal crimes in the Eastern District of New York?
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York, led as of mid-2026 by Joseph Nocella, Jr. The office pairs one of the Justice Department’s most active national-security programs with prosecutions for market manipulation, securities and health care fraud, money laundering, organized crime, and international narcotics trafficking.
Which appeals court covers the Eastern District of New York?
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, which sits in Manhattan and also reviews cases from Connecticut and Vermont. Under Rule 4(b), a criminal defendant generally has fourteen days from entry of judgment to file the notice of appeal.
How does a federal criminal case proceed in the Eastern District of New York?
Most cases open with an investigation, then an indictment. The defendant is presented and arraigned before a magistrate judge in Brooklyn or Central Islip, where bail is usually decided. Pretrial motions and discovery follow, the case resolves by plea or trial, and sentencing comes after any conviction.
Is there a federal court on Long Island?
Yes. The Eastern District of New York’s Long Island courthouse is at 100 Federal Plaza in Central Islip. Completed in 2000 and designed by Richard Meier, it is the second-largest courthouse in the country, and cases arising in Nassau and Suffolk counties are generally heard there.
What local rules apply in the Eastern District of New York?
The EDNY and SDNY share a single set of joint local rules, most recently amended effective January 2, 2026. EDNY cases are also governed by the court’s division-of-business rules, which allocate matters between Brooklyn and Central Islip, and by the assigned judge’s individual practices and rules.
Does the Eastern District of New York handle cryptocurrency cases?
Yes, and increasingly so. In February 2026, the CEO of the SafeMoon digital-asset venture was sentenced in this district to 100 months in prison after a trial conviction in a multi-million-dollar crypto-fraud scheme. Prosecutors here typically charge digital-asset conduct under securities-fraud, wire-fraud, and money-laundering theories.
Can an out-of-state lawyer represent me in the Eastern District of New York?
Yes. Pro hac vice admission lets a qualified attorney who is not a member of the EDNY bar appear in a specific case with the court’s approval. Given how many of this district’s cases are national or international in scope, out-of-district defense counsel are a familiar presence.
Does the firm handle federal cases in the Eastern District of New York?
Yes. Elizabeth Franklin-Best, P.C. takes EDNY matters at the trial level, on appeal to the Second Circuit, and in collateral proceedings including Section 2255 motions and compassionate release, entering each case through pro hac vice admission.
Talk With a Federal Criminal Defense Lawyer
From a knock on the door in Queens to a sentencing date in Central Islip to a conviction that needs appellate or collateral attack, an EDNY case deserves a clear-eyed assessment — and that is what our paid, one-hour initial consultation delivers.