New Judicial Security Program Helps Over 2,000 Judges, Relatives

A judicial security program meant to help federal judges remove their personal information from the internet helped over 1,700 judges last year, according to a new judiciary report.

The federal judiciary’s Vulnerability Management Program was created in 2022 after a litigant shot and killed the son of a federal judge in New Jersey. The program in 2024 “provided services” to the nearly 2,000 judges, as well as 114 retired judges and 235 family members, according to an annual Administrative Office for the US Courts report released on Tuesday. There are over 800 active federal judges, as well as several hundred senior judges.

The report also said the program worked with federal, state, and local government agencies on over 1,900 “potential or actual incidents that either disrupted Judiciary operations or caused heightened facility or personal security concerns.”

The program was created after then-President Joe Biden signed the Daniel Anderl Judicial Security and Privacy Act in 2022, following the fatal shooting of US District Judge Esther Salas’s son at her New Jersey home. The law allows federal judges and their family members to have their personally identifying information removed from websites.

AO Director Robert Conrad said in Tuesday’s report that the Vulnerability Management Program has been fully implemented, “and is taking concrete steps to address concerns about increasing threats against federal judges in recent years.”

Threats to federal judges have risen in recent years. The new report doesn’t include 2025, when there’s been a new series of attacks against judges who have blocked the Trump administration’s early actions.

The federal judiciary on Tuesday also published updated statistics about courts. Those include 1,510 judicial conduct and disability complaints filed against federal judges in 2024, an 11% uptick from the year before. The vast majority of those complaints are dismissed by the chief circuit judges who review them.

US District Judge Aileen Cannon of the Southern District of Florida was the apparent subject of a number of rejected complaints in 2024, after she dismissed an indictment against now-President Donald Trump over his retention of classified documents after leaving office, finding the special counsel prosecuting the case was improperly appointed. Special Counsel Jack Smith dropped the appeal of that case after Trump’s November election win.