No federal trial court looms larger in white-collar enforcement than the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. From the courthouses at Foley Square, this court has handled many of the nation’s defining securities-fraud, market-manipulation, and public-corruption prosecutions, and in fiscal year 2024 fraud offenses made up a share of its sentencing docket nearly three times the national average. Anyone under investigation or indictment here is litigating against the federal government’s deepest bench of financial-crime prosecutors — a reality that should shape every early decision in the case.
This page walks through the court itself — its Manhattan, White Plains, and Poughkeepsie courthouses, its bench and Part 1 magistrate practice, the U.S. Attorney’s Office and its Securities and Commodities Fraud Task Force, the joint local criminal rules, and what the sentencing data show — and then explains how our firm defends clients here. Elizabeth Franklin-Best, P.C. practices federal criminal defense, appeals, and post-conviction litigation nationwide, and we appear for clients in the Southern District of New York through pro hac vice admission. This page is part of our federal courts directory.
If a grand jury subpoena, a target letter, or an unsealed indictment in Manhattan or White Plains has brought you to this page, we offer a paid, one-hour initial consultation to assess where the case stands and what should happen next.
Table of Contents
Quick Answer: Southern District of New York
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| What does the Southern District of New York cover? | Eight counties — New York (Manhattan), Bronx, Westchester, Rockland, Putnam, Orange, Dutchess, and Sullivan — with courthouses in Manhattan, White Plains, and Poughkeepsie. |
| Who prosecutes federal cases there? | The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, led as of mid-2026 by U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton, including its Securities and Commodities Fraud Task Force. |
| How large is the court? | Twenty-eight authorized district judgeships under 28 U.S.C. § 133 — among the largest federal trial benches — plus senior and magistrate judges, with Chief Judge Laura Taylor Swain presiding. |
| Which circuit hears appeals? | The Second Circuit, which sits at 40 Foley Square in Manhattan; a criminal notice of appeal is generally due within 14 days of judgment. |
| Where are post-conviction motions filed? | Back in the SDNY itself — a Section 2255 motion attacking an SDNY conviction returns to this district, which has a standing order on how those motions are opened. |
| How does an engagement with the firm begin? | With a paid, one-hour initial consultation; when we take an SDNY case, we appear through the court’s pro hac vice admission procedure. |
Key Takeaways
- The SDNY spans eight counties — Manhattan and the Bronx plus Westchester, Rockland, Putnam, Orange, Dutchess, and Sullivan — and hears cases in Manhattan, White Plains, and Poughkeepsie.
- Congress has authorized 28 district judgeships for the SDNY under 28 U.S.C. § 133; Chief Judge Laura Taylor Swain leads the court as of mid-2026.
- Of the 1,048 people sentenced in this district in fiscal year 2024, 25.2 percent were fraud, theft, or embezzlement cases — nearly triple the 8.6 percent national share (USSC data).
- The U.S. Attorney’s Office prosecutes market cases through its Securities and Commodities Fraud Task Force; Sam Bankman-Fried’s 25-year FTX sentence (2024) came out of this district.
- Criminal practice is governed by joint SDNY/EDNY local criminal rules (effective January 2, 2026), division-of-business rules, and each judge’s individual practices.
- Arrests, presentments, and after-hours emergency applications run through Part 1, the magistrate-judge duty part.
- Appeals go to the Second Circuit under Rule 4(b)’s 14-day deadline — a claim-processing rule after United States v. Harris (2d Cir. Jan. 14, 2026), but one strictly enforced when the government invokes it.
- Section 2255 motions attacking an SDNY conviction are filed back in this district; our firm handles SDNY trial-level, appellate, and post-conviction matters pro hac vice.
The Southern District of New York at a Glance
The United States District Court for the Southern District of New York is one of four federal trial courts in New York State. Its territory takes in eight counties — New York (Manhattan), Bronx, Westchester, Rockland, Putnam, Orange, Dutchess, and Sullivan — and it hears cases in Manhattan, White Plains, and Poughkeepsie. It is also the oldest continuously sitting federal court in the country: its predecessor convened in November 1789, months before the Supreme Court first met.
Every federal prosecution here is brought by the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, whose structure and priorities are detailed below. The court sits within the Second Circuit, and the court of appeals that reviews its judgments sits at the Thurgood Marshall United States Courthouse on the same Foley Square where many SDNY criminal trials take place.
Because Wall Street sits inside its boundaries, the district’s docket carries a concentration of complex white-collar and securities-fraud prosecutions that no other federal court matches. The Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure apply here as everywhere, but day-to-day practice is also shaped by joint local criminal rules shared with the neighboring Eastern District of New York, by the court’s division-of-business rules, and by each judge’s published individual practices.
Courthouses, the Bench, and Part 1 Magistrate Practice
Criminal cases in Manhattan are heard at two adjacent courthouses near Foley Square: the Daniel Patrick Moynihan United States Courthouse at 500 Pearl Street and the Thurgood Marshall United States Courthouse at 40 Foley Square. Cases from the northern counties are generally heard at the Hon. Charles L. Brieant Jr. Federal Building and Courthouse, 300 Quarropas Street in White Plains, and the court also maintains a courthouse at 355 Main Street in Poughkeepsie. Where a case lands is not an afterthought: the court’s Rules for the Division of Business Among District Judges, most recently amended effective February 12, 2026, govern assignment between the Manhattan and White Plains courthouses.
Congress has authorized 28 district judgeships for this court under 28 U.S.C. § 133 — one of the largest federal trial benches in the nation — and the working bench is larger still once senior district judges and magistrate judges are counted. Chief Judge Laura Taylor Swain leads the court, with Judith C. McCarthy serving as Chief U.S. Magistrate Judge (roster as of June 2026). Each SDNY judge publishes individual practices that bind the lawyers appearing in that courtroom, so mastering the assigned judge’s rules is among the first tasks in any new case.
Arrests and emergencies run through Part 1, the magistrate-judge duty part. The on-duty magistrate judge takes initial presentments and arraignments on complaints, hears bail argument, and handles emergency applications, and the court publishes a Part 1 schedule that covers after-hours matters. For a person arrested in this district, the Part 1 presentment is the first courtroom event in the case — and the first chance to contest detention — which is why counsel should be engaged before that appearance whenever possible.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office and Its Enforcement Priorities
The United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York is led, as of mid-2026, by U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton, a former Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission. The Office has publicly identified securities and corporate fraud, cyberattacks and cyber-enabled fraud, and money laundering among its priorities, alongside narcotics trafficking, gun and gang violence, national security, and public corruption. A separate White Plains Division covers cases arising in the district’s northern counties.
For anyone facing a financial-crime investigation, the unit that matters most is the Office’s Securities and Commodities Fraud Task Force, which staffs the district’s market-related prosecutions and regularly proceeds in parallel with the SEC and CFTC. The Office has also adopted a whistleblower pilot program and a corporate self-reporting program — initiatives that change the calculus for executives and companies deciding how to respond when misconduct surfaces internally.
Recent dockets show the scale at which this district operates. Sam Bankman-Fried was convicted at trial in Manhattan and sentenced on March 28, 2024, to 25 years in prison for the fraud schemes surrounding the collapse of FTX. In January 2026, the Office unsealed an indictment charging the founder and former CEO of First Brands Group and a second former executive in an alleged multibillion-dollar scheme to defraud lenders — charges that are accusations only, with the defendants presumed innocent unless proven guilty. Matters of this magnitude are routine in this courthouse in a way they are nowhere else.
Federal Criminal Cases in the District
For all its securities-fraud fame, the SDNY’s criminal docket is broad: white-collar offenses and fraud of every variety, drug and firearms prosecutions, public corruption, and national-security matters all move through the same courtrooms. Whatever the charge, the case follows a defined federal sequence.
Here that sequence typically opens with an agency investigation — FBI, IRS Criminal Investigation, or Homeland Security Investigations — sometimes announced by a target letter or grand jury subpoena. An indictment follows, then the Part 1 presentment and arraignment, pretrial motions and discovery, and resolution by plea agreement or trial, with sentencing after any conviction. Our federal criminal process hub explains each stage in depth.
Our role across that sequence is to make the government prove its theory at every step — testing the indictment against current fraud law, litigating suppression and discovery disputes, challenging loss figures, and building a record that protects the client’s position on appeal whether the case resolves by plea or verdict.
Applied Insight: In SDNY white-collar matters, the criminal case is rarely the only case. The SEC or CFTC is often running a parallel civil investigation, and anything said in one forum can surface in the other. Before responding to any agency in this district — prosecutor or regulator — the strategy should be coordinated across every proceeding by counsel who sees the whole board.
Fraud Sentencing in This District: What the Data Show
The U.S. Sentencing Commission’s fiscal year 2024 Statistical Information Packet for the Southern District of New York reports 1,048 individuals sentenced. Fraud, theft, and embezzlement made up 25.2 percent of those cases — nearly triple the 8.6 percent national share — with drug trafficking at 25.8 percent, firearms at 11.8 percent, and robbery at 8.5 percent. The district’s median fraud sentence of 14 months tells its own story: most fraud cases here are far smaller than the headline prosecutions, and outcomes turn heavily on loss amount, role, and mitigation.
Exposure in an SDNY fraud case is driven above all by the loss table in section 2B1.1 of the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines. Since November 1, 2024, Amendment 827 has placed the intended-loss rule in the guideline’s text itself, resolving the fight over whether commentary could expand loss beyond actual harm. And because 98 percent of sentenced federal cases ended in guilty pleas in fiscal year 2025, the loss calculation and related sentencing disputes are very often the decisive battle in the case.
The substantive law has shifted too — mostly in defendants’ favor. Ciminelli v. United States, 598 U.S. 306 (2023), struck down the right-to-control theory of wire fraud that had long been accepted in the Second Circuit; Percoco v. United States, 598 U.S. 319 (2023), rejected vague honest-services instructions aimed at private citizens with government influence; and Kousisis v. United States, 605 U.S. 114 (2025), preserved fraudulent-inducement prosecutions while confirming that materiality is the doctrine’s real limit. Both Ciminelli and Percoco came up through the Second Circuit, so their force is felt most directly in the courtrooms of this district — every pending SDNY fraud indictment should be measured against them.
Appeals and Post-Conviction Matters
Sentencing in this district is often the midpoint of the fight, not the end. Convictions are reviewed by the Second Circuit, and the notice of appeal in a criminal case is generally due within fourteen days of the entry of judgment under Rule 4(b). In United States v. Harris (2d Cir. Jan. 14, 2026), a panel of that court treated the fourteen-day deadline as a claim-processing rule the government can forfeit rather than a jurisdictional bar — but no one should plan around forfeiture, because the deadline is enforced whenever the government invokes it.
Collateral review also belongs to this court: a motion under 28 U.S.C. § 2255 attacking an SDNY conviction is filed back in the SDNY, which maintains a standing order governing how § 2255 motions are opened on the docket. We litigate post-conviction and compassionate release matters in this district as part of a national appellate and post-conviction practice — work that turns on command of federal law and the record, not on a Manhattan office address. The Second Circuit is fertile ground for that work: its district courts decided 118 compassionate-release motions in fiscal year 2025 and granted 27.1 percent of them, the highest rate of any circuit except the Ninth, against a 14.1 percent national figure (U.S. Sentencing Commission data). Since Rutherford v. United States (decided May 28, 2026), however, a nonretroactive change in sentencing law can no longer supply the extraordinary and compelling reason, so an SDNY motion must rest on a medical condition, advanced age, a caregiving need, or a comparable circumstance.
How the Firm Practices in This Court
Our firm appears in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York through pro hac vice admission — the procedure, set out in the court’s own attorney-admission rules, by which a qualified lawyer from outside the district is admitted for a particular case. The SDNY processes these applications as a matter of course; its courtrooms have always drawn counsel from across the country for precisely the kind of high-stakes federal litigation this district hosts.
Elizabeth Franklin-Best, our principal attorney, has appeared in more than 330 federal proceedings, including over 100 appeals, and is admitted to the United States Supreme Court and all twelve federal circuit courts of appeals — among them the Second Circuit, which reviews every SDNY judgment. She takes federal matters nationwide through pro hac vice admission, from the Northeast to the Mountain West, and is the author of Reversing Your Criminal Conviction. Best Lawyers in America 2026 names her a “Best Lawyer” in Appellate Practice, and Chambers USA 2026 ranks the firm for Litigation: White-Collar Crime & Government Investigations — the very practice area that dominates this district’s criminal docket.
In a district where the government staffs its market cases with dedicated task-force prosecutors, the defense answer is depth, not geography. We bring an appellate lawyer’s eye to SDNY matters from the first day — preserving issues at the trial level, contesting loss calculations at sentencing, and carrying meritorious issues to the Second Circuit and into collateral review when the case warrants it.
Frequently Asked Questions
What area does the Southern District of New York cover?
The district covers eight New York counties: New York (Manhattan), Bronx, Westchester, Rockland, Putnam, Orange, Dutchess, and Sullivan. Court is held in Manhattan at the Moynihan and Thurgood Marshall courthouses, in White Plains, and in Poughkeepsie.
Who prosecutes federal crimes in the Southern District of New York?
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, led as of mid-2026 by U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton. Its Securities and Commodities Fraud Task Force staffs market-related cases, and a White Plains Division covers prosecutions arising in the northern counties.
Which appeals court covers the Southern District of New York?
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, which sits at 40 Foley Square in Manhattan and also covers Connecticut and Vermont. A criminal notice of appeal is generally due within fourteen days of the entry of judgment.
Does the Southern District of New York handle many white-collar cases?
Yes. In fiscal year 2024, fraud, theft, and embezzlement accounted for 25.2 percent of the 1,048 cases sentenced in this district — nearly three times the 8.6 percent national share — according to U.S. Sentencing Commission data.
Where is the federal courthouse in the Southern District of New York?
There are four: the Daniel Patrick Moynihan United States Courthouse at 500 Pearl Street and the Thurgood Marshall United States Courthouse at 40 Foley Square, both in lower Manhattan; the Hon. Charles L. Brieant Jr. Federal Building and Courthouse at 300 Quarropas Street in White Plains; and a courthouse at 355 Main Street in Poughkeepsie.
What is Part 1 in the Southern District of New York?
Part 1 is the court’s magistrate-judge duty part. The on-duty magistrate judge handles initial presentments after arrest, arraignments on complaints, bail arguments, and emergency applications, including after-hours matters under the court’s published Part 1 schedule.
What local rules govern criminal cases in the SDNY?
The Southern and Eastern Districts of New York share joint local rules, most recently amended effective January 2, 2026. SDNY cases are also governed by the court’s Rules for the Division of Business Among District Judges and by the assigned judge’s individual practices.
Can an out-of-state lawyer represent me in the Southern District of New York?
Yes. The court’s rules allow a qualified attorney who is not a member of its bar to be admitted pro hac vice for a specific case. In a court that hosts nationally significant prosecutions, out-of-district counsel appearing this way is an everyday occurrence.
Does the firm handle federal cases in the Southern District of New York?
Yes. Elizabeth Franklin-Best, P.C. defends SDNY clients at the trial level, on appeal to the Second Circuit, and in post-conviction proceedings such as Section 2255 motions, appearing through the court’s pro hac vice admission procedure.
Can an SDNY sentence be reduced through compassionate release?
It can, in the right case. A motion under Section 3582(c)(1)(A) is filed back in the Southern District of New York, and Second Circuit district courts granted 27.1 percent of compassionate-release motions in fiscal year 2025 — the highest rate of any circuit but the Ninth, against a 14.1 percent national rate. After the Supreme Court’s 2026 Rutherford decision, the motion must rest on a medical, age-related, caregiving, or comparable circumstance rather than on a later change in sentencing law.
Talk With a Federal Criminal Defense Lawyer
Whether your SDNY matter is a new investigation, a pending indictment, a Second Circuit appeal, or a § 2255 motion, the starting point is the same: a paid, one-hour initial consultation in which we evaluate the record and map the realistic paths forward.