When the Supreme Court narrowed the federal bribery statute in Snyder v. United States, 603 U.S. 1 (2024), the conviction under review came out of this district — a Portage mayor tried in the Hammond Division. That is the Northern District of Indiana in miniature: a steel-corridor trial court stretching from the Lake Michigan shoreline to Fort Wayne, small enough that 236 people were sentenced here in fiscal year 2024, consequential enough that its cases reshape national doctrine. Anyone facing a federal investigation or charge in northern Indiana needs counsel who understands both this court and the law it is making.
This guide covers the court’s three staffed courthouses and its bench, the U.S. Attorney’s Office that prosecutes here, the Snyder story, and how we defend clients in this district. Elizabeth Franklin-Best, P.C. is a nationwide federal defense practice: our principal attorney, Elizabeth Franklin-Best, has handled more than 330 federal proceedings, including over 100 appeals, and is admitted to the U.S. Supreme Court and all twelve federal circuits. She was named a 2026 “Best Lawyer” in Appellate Practice by Best Lawyers in America and holds a Chambers USA 2026 ranking for Litigation: White-Collar Crime & Government Investigations, and she represents federal defendants in the Northern District of Indiana through admission pro hac vice. This page is part of our federal courts directory.
If federal agents, a grand jury subpoena, or an indictment has pulled you into this district’s orbit, we offer a paid, one-hour initial consultation to walk through the case and chart your options together.
Table of Contents
Quick Answer: Northern District of Indiana
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| What does the Northern District of Indiana cover? | The 32 northern Indiana counties, organized into the Hammond, South Bend, and Fort Wayne Divisions under 28 U.S.C. § 94(a). |
| Where does the court actually sit? | Staffed courthouses operate in Hammond, South Bend, and Fort Wayne. The Lafayette clerk’s office closed on May 31, 2024, and its operations moved to Hammond. |
| Who leads the bench? | Chief Judge Holly A. Brady in Fort Wayne, on a court of five authorized district judgeships and seven magistrate judges (as of mid-2026). |
| Who prosecutes federal cases there? | The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Indiana, led from Hammond by U.S. Attorney Adam L. Mildred, Senate-confirmed in December 2025. |
| What dominates the docket? | Firearms prosecutions — 35.2 percent of FY2024 sentencings, nearly triple the national share — followed by drug trafficking and fraud. |
| Which circuit hears appeals? | The Seventh Circuit, sitting in Chicago, reviews convictions from both Indiana districts and the rest of Illinois, Indiana, and Wisconsin. |
| Why do lawyers nationwide know this district? | Snyder v. United States, the 2024 Supreme Court decision limiting 18 U.S.C. § 666, began as a Hammond Division prosecution of Portage’s mayor. |
| Can we appear in this court? | Yes — we accept Northern District of Indiana cases through pro hac vice admission, and a paid, one-hour initial consultation is where every engagement starts. |
Key Takeaways
- The Northern District of Indiana spans 32 counties in three divisions — Hammond, South Bend, and Fort Wayne — under 28 U.S.C. § 94(a).
- Three courthouses are staffed: Hammond, South Bend, and Fort Wayne. Lafayette remains a statutory place of holding court, but its clerk’s office closed May 31, 2024.
- Snyder v. United States, 603 U.S. 1 (2024), which held that 18 U.S.C. § 666 reaches bribes but not after-the-fact gratuities, arose from a Hammond Division prosecution.
- Firearms offenses made up 35.2 percent of the district’s 236 FY2024 sentencings — nearly triple the 13.2 percent national figure.
- Roughly 7 percent of the district’s FY2024 cases went to trial (17 trials), one of the higher trial rates in the federal system.
- U.S. Attorney Adam L. Mildred, confirmed by the Senate in December 2025, leads the prosecuting office from Hammond.
- Appeals go to the Seventh Circuit, and the criminal notice-of-appeal clock under Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 4(b) runs just 14 days from entry of judgment.
- Motions under 28 U.S.C. § 2255 return to this district — the court of conviction — no matter where the person is imprisoned.
- We handle Northern District of Indiana trial-level, appellate, and post-conviction matters through pro hac vice admission.
The Northern District of Indiana at a Glance
The United States District Court for the Northern District of Indiana is the northern of Indiana’s two federal trial courts. Congress drew it as three divisions under 28 U.S.C. § 94(a): the Hammond Division (nine counties, including Lake and Porter along the lakeshore), the South Bend Division (eleven counties, including Elkhart and St. Joseph), and the Fort Wayne Division (twelve counties, including Allen) — 32 counties in all, taking in Gary, Hammond, South Bend, Elkhart, and Fort Wayne.
The statute still lists Lafayette as a place of holding court for the Hammond Division, but the court’s practical footprint changed in 2024: effective May 31, 2024, the clerk’s office in the Charles A. Halleck Federal Building in Lafayette closed, and its in-person services moved to Hammond. New cases venued in the seven Lafayette counties — Benton, Carroll, Jasper, Newton, Tippecanoe, Warren, and White — still receive Lafayette cause numbers, but the working courthouses are Hammond, South Bend, and Fort Wayne. Knowing which division a case will land in matters from the first filing.
Every prosecution here is brought by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Indiana, and every conviction is reviewable in the Seventh Circuit in Chicago. The Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure govern in this court as in every other, but the district layers on its own unified local rules — covering everything from filing mechanics to attorney admission under N.D. Ind. L.R. 83-5 — and those local details shape how a defense actually gets litigated.
The Bench: Five Judgeships, Three Staffed Courthouses
Congress allots the Northern District of Indiana five district judgeships under 28 U.S.C. § 133. As of mid-2026, the court’s own roster shows Chief Judge Holly A. Brady presiding from Fort Wayne, Judges Philip P. Simon and Gretchen S. Lund sitting in Hammond, and Judges Damon R. Leichty and Cristal C. Brisco sitting in South Bend. Three judges on senior status — James T. Moody, Theresa L. Springmann, and Jon E. DeGuilio, all based in Hammond — continue to carry cases, which is why the court describes itself as having eight Article III judges in total.
Seven magistrate judges round out the bench: Andrew L. Teel and Paul R. Cherry in Fort Wayne; Andrew Rodovich, John Martin, and Abizer Zanzi in Hammond; and Michael G. Gotsch, Sr. and Scott J. Frankel in South Bend. Magistrate judges handle initial appearances, detention hearings, and much of the pretrial motion practice, so in a typical felony case the first several courtroom decisions that matter — release or detention chief among them — happen in front of a magistrate judge, not the district judge who will eventually preside at trial.
Because criminal cases are assigned within the division where venue lies, the county where conduct allegedly occurred effectively selects the courthouse and narrows the pool of possible judges to a handful. We study each assigned judge’s published procedures and sentencing record as a matter of preparation — never as a basis for promising any outcome, which no honest lawyer can do.
Snyder v. United States: The Portage Case That Rewrote Federal Bribery Law
In 2013, the City of Portage — a Porter County city of about 38,000 in the Hammond Division — paid roughly $1.1 million to a local truck dealership, Great Lakes Peterbilt, for five trash trucks. In 2014, the company wrote a $13,000 check to Mayor James Snyder, who said it was payment for consulting services. Federal prosecutors saw a reward for steering the contracts and charged him under 18 U.S.C. § 666(a)(1)(B), the federal-program bribery statute that applies to state and local officials whose agencies receive federal funds.
The prosecution that followed was anything but ordinary. The case passed through three judges — it was ultimately tried before Judge Matthew Kennelly of the Northern District of Illinois, sitting by designation, after an earlier conviction was set aside and a new trial ordered — and the entire Northern District of Indiana U.S. Attorney’s Office was recused when Snyder’s former defense lawyer, Thomas Kirsch, became the district’s U.S. Attorney. A second jury convicted, the court imposed 21 months, and the Seventh Circuit affirmed in United States v. Snyder, 71 F.4th 555 (7th Cir. 2023).
The Supreme Court reversed. Snyder v. United States, 603 U.S. 1 (2024), held 6–3 that § 666 proscribes bribes — payments tied to an agreement made before the official act — but does not criminalize gratuities accepted afterward, leaving after-the-fact rewards to state and local regulation. For anyone facing a § 666 charge, the timing and existence of any agreement is now a front-line battleground, and this district is where that doctrine was forged. Our public corruption and bribery defense guide explains how Snyder changes the defense of these cases nationwide.
What Federal Prosecutors Pursue in Northern Indiana
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Indiana, headquartered in Hammond, serves an estimated 2.5 million residents. As of mid-2026 it is led by U.S. Attorney Adam L. Mildred, a Fort Wayne native who tried more than 200 cases over 28 years as a state prosecutor in Allen and Noble Counties before the Senate confirmed him on December 18, 2025; he was sworn in on January 5, 2026. His office has publicly emphasized drug-trafficking and cartel-related enforcement, violent crime, child-exploitation cases, and immigration offenses.
The sentencing data show what that means in practice. Of the 236 people sentenced in the district in fiscal year 2024, per the U.S. Sentencing Commission’s district packet, 83 — 35.2 percent — were firearms cases, nearly triple the 13.2 percent national share and a direct reflection of the Gary–Hammond corridor’s violent-crime enforcement. Drug trafficking accounted for another 71 sentencings (30.1 percent), with fraud, theft, and embezzlement at 30 (12.7 percent), sexual abuse at 12, and child sexual abuse material at 10. The office’s recent press activity runs the same gamut: bank and wire fraud convictions, child-exploitation sentencings, and combined drug-and-firearms prosecutions out of Elkhart and the lakeshore cities.
One more number deserves attention: 92.8 percent of the district’s FY2024 cases resolved by guilty plea, which sounds high until you compare it to the rest of the country. Nationally, about 98 percent of federal cases end in pleas; this district tried 17 cases in a single year. Federal juries are a live possibility in northern Indiana in a way they simply are not in many districts, and a defense built from day one as if trial were realistic tends to produce better outcomes at every stage.
Federal Criminal Cases in the District
However a case is labeled — white-collar or fraud, drug or firearms, corruption or child exploitation — federal prosecutions in the Northern District of Indiana follow the same procedural arc, and each stage carries decisions that cannot be unmade later.
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. The firm’s federal criminal process hub walks through each stage in detail.
Our role across that arc is to build the record a court of appeals would want to see while fighting the case in front of us — pressing suppression and dismissal motions where the facts support them, negotiating from strength when resolution serves the client, and trying the case when it does not. In a district that actually tries cases, that posture is not theater; it is leverage.
Applied Insight: Snyder itself shows why preservation matters in this district. The argument that won in the Supreme Court — that § 666 does not reach gratuities — was raised and lost in the trial court and the Seventh Circuit before it prevailed in Washington. An argument that is never made in the Hammond, South Bend, or Fort Wayne courtroom is usually an argument no appellate court will ever hear. We litigate trial-level cases with that record in mind from the first motion.
Appeals and Post-Conviction Matters
Sentencing in Hammond, South Bend, or Fort Wayne is not the last word. Every conviction here can be taken to the Seventh Circuit — but Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 4(b) gives a defendant only 14 days from entry of judgment to file the notice of appeal, so the appellate decision has to be made while the sentencing transcript is still warm. Snyder is the standing reminder of what Seventh Circuit and Supreme Court review can accomplish when the issue was preserved below.
After direct appeal, federal post-conviction relief under 28 U.S.C. § 2255 belongs to the court of conviction: a challenge to a Northern District of Indiana judgment comes back to this district even if the person is serving the sentence states away. We also litigate compassionate release motions here under the Seventh Circuit’s framework — including United States v. Thacker, 4 F.4th 569 (7th Cir. 2021), which limits § 3582(c)(1)(A) as a vehicle for attacking sentence length, a rule the Supreme Court’s 2026 decision in Rutherford confirmed nationwide. The odds underscore why the motion has to be built with care: across fiscal year 2025 the Seventh Circuit granted just 8.1 percent of compassionate-release motions (14 of 173), and the Northern District of Indiana granted 2 of 24, per the U.S. Sentencing Commission’s full-year data. Appellate and post-conviction litigation is the core of our practice, and because it turns on national law and the written record, it travels to this district without losing a step.
How the Firm Practices in This Court
We appear in the Northern District of Indiana the way the court’s own rules contemplate for outside counsel: pro hac vice admission under N.D. Ind. L.R. 83-5(a)(2)(C). The mechanics are straightforward — register through PACER, file the court’s motion for admission in the case through CM/ECF, and pay the admission fee — and we handle them at the outset of an engagement so representation never waits on paperwork.
Out-of-district counsel is unremarkable in federal court because the law being litigated is federal everywhere: the same criminal code, the same Federal Rules, the same Sentencing Guidelines, the same Seventh Circuit precedent that binds Hammond also binds Chicago and Milwaukee. What changes from district to district is local practice, which is why this page exists. We pair national federal-defense experience with attention to this court’s specific rhythms — its division-based assignments, its magistrate-judge practice, and its unusually real trial culture.
Elizabeth Franklin-Best is admitted to the U.S. Supreme Court, all twelve federal circuits including the Seventh, and several district courts, and is the author of Reversing Your Criminal Conviction. For matters elsewhere in Indiana or across the state line, see our guides to the Southern District of Indiana, the Eastern District of Wisconsin, and the Northern District of Illinois.
Frequently Asked Questions
What area does the Northern District of Indiana cover?
Thirty-two counties across northern Indiana, organized by 28 U.S.C. § 94(a) into three divisions: Hammond (including Gary, Hammond, and the seven Lafayette-venue counties), South Bend (including Elkhart), and Fort Wayne. Staffed courthouses operate in Hammond, South Bend, and Fort Wayne.
Who prosecutes federal crimes in the Northern District of Indiana?
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Indiana, headquartered in Hammond and serving roughly 2.5 million residents. As of mid-2026 the office is led by U.S. Attorney Adam L. Mildred, a longtime Indiana state prosecutor confirmed by the Senate in December 2025, and its stated priorities include drug trafficking, violent crime, child exploitation, and immigration offenses.
Who are the federal judges in the Northern District of Indiana?
As of mid-2026, Chief Judge Holly A. Brady sits in Fort Wayne, Judges Philip P. Simon and Gretchen S. Lund sit in Hammond, and Judges Damon R. Leichty and Cristal C. Brisco sit in South Bend. Senior Judges James T. Moody, Theresa L. Springmann, and Jon E. DeGuilio continue to hear cases, and seven magistrate judges serve across the district’s three courthouses.
What was Snyder v. United States?
Snyder v. United States, 603 U.S. 1 (2024), is the Supreme Court decision holding that 18 U.S.C. § 666, the federal-program bribery statute, reaches bribes agreed to before an official act but not gratuities accepted afterward. The case began in this district: the mayor of Portage was convicted in the Hammond Division over a 13,000-dollar payment he received after the city bought trash trucks from a favored dealer, and the Supreme Court reversed that conviction in 2024.
Is there still a federal courthouse in Lafayette, Indiana?
Lafayette remains a statutory place of holding court for the Hammond Division, but the clerk’s office in the Charles A. Halleck Federal Building closed to the public on May 31, 2024, and its in-person services moved to Hammond. New cases venued in the seven Lafayette counties still receive Lafayette cause numbers.
Which appeals court covers the Northern District of Indiana?
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, which sits in Chicago and reviews federal cases from Illinois, Indiana, and Wisconsin. A criminal notice of appeal is generally due within 14 days after the entry of judgment, so the appeal decision must be made quickly after sentencing.
How does a federal criminal case proceed in the Northern District of Indiana?
Most cases start with an investigation — sometimes signaled by a target letter or a grand jury subpoena — followed by indictment, an initial appearance and arraignment, pretrial motions and discovery, and resolution by plea agreement or trial. In this district the early hearings, including detention, typically happen before a magistrate judge in the division where venue lies, and sentencing under the federal Guidelines follows any conviction.
Can an out-of-state lawyer represent me in the Northern District of Indiana?
Yes. The district admits qualified outside attorneys pro hac vice under N.D. Ind. L.R. 83-5, through a motion filed in the case via CM/ECF with an admission fee. Because federal criminal law is national, what should drive the choice of counsel is depth of federal experience rather than a local mailing address.
Does the firm handle federal cases in the Northern District of Indiana?
We do. Elizabeth Franklin-Best, P.C. defends federal cases in Hammond, South Bend, and Fort Wayne through pro hac vice admission, and we brief Seventh Circuit appeals and litigate § 2255 and compassionate-release matters arising from this district. Every engagement starts with a paid, one-hour initial consultation so you get a candid evaluation before committing to anything.
Talk With a Federal Criminal Defense Lawyer
Whether your matter sits in Hammond, South Bend, or Fort Wayne — at the investigation stage, on the eve of sentencing, or years into a sentence you believe the law no longer supports — we will give you a straight assessment of where it stands. Book a paid, one-hour initial consultation and we will map the realistic paths forward together.