United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois

The United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois (in case citations, N.D. Ill.) is the federal trial court with jurisdiction over the northern counties of Illinois. It is one of the busiest federal trial courts in the United States, with famous cases including those of Al Capone and the Chicago Eight.

Appeals from the Northern District of Illinois are taken to the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit (except for patent claims and claims against the U.S. government under the Tucker Act, which are appealed to the Federal Circuit).

The acting United States attorney for the district, representing the United States in litigation in the court, is Morris Pasqual since March 12, 2023.

Organization
The court's jurisdiction is split into an eastern division, including Cook, DuPage, McHenry, Grundy, Kane, Kendall, LaSalle, Lake, and Will counties, with its sessions held in Chicago and Wheaton; and a western division, including Boone, Carroll, DeKalb, Jo Daviess, Lee, Ogle, Stephenson, Whiteside, and Winnebago counties, with its sessions held in Freeport and Rockford.

History
The United States District Court for the District of Illinois was established by a statute passed by the United States Congress on March 3, 1819,. The act established a single office for a judge to preside over the court. Initially, the court was not within any existing judicial circuit, and appeals from the court were taken directly to the United States Supreme Court. In 1837, Congress created the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, placing it in Chicago, Illinois and giving it jurisdiction over the District of Illinois,.

The Northern District itself was created by a statute passed on February 13, 1855,, which subdivided the District of Illinois into the Northern and the Southern Districts. The boundaries of the District and the seats of the courts were set forth in the statute:

"The counties of Hancock, McDonough, Peoria, Woodford, Livingston, and Iroquois, and all the counties in the said State north of them, shall compose one district, to be called the northern district of Illinois, and courts shall be held for the said district at the city of Chicago; and the residue of the counties of the said State shall compose another district, to be called the southern district of Illinois, and courts shall be held for the same at the city of Springfield."

The district has since been re-organized several times. The United States District Court for the Eastern District of Illinois was created on March 3, 1905, by, by splitting counties out of the Northern and Southern Districts. It was later eliminated in a reorganization on October 2, 1978, which replaced it with a Central District,, formed primarily from parts of the Southern District, and returning some counties to the Northern District.

The Northern District of Illinois, which contains the entire Chicago metropolitan area, accounts for 1,531 of the 1,828 public corruption convictions in the state between 1976 and 2012, almost 84%, also making it the federal district with the most public corruption convictions in the nation between 1976 and 2012.

List of U.S. attorneys since 1857

 * Augustus M. Herrington, 1857–1858
 * Henry S. Fitch, 1858–1861
 * Edwin C. Larned, 1861
 * Joseph O. Glover, 1869
 * Mark Bangs, 1875–1879
 * Joseph B. Seake, 1879–1884
 * Richard S. Tuthill, 1884–1886
 * William G. Ewing, 1886–1890
 * Thomas E. Milchrist, 1891–1893
 * Sherwood Dixon, 1893–1894
 * John C. Black, 1895–1899
 * Solomon H. Bethea, 1899–1905
 * Charles B. Morrison, 1905–1906
 * Edwin W. Sims, 1906–1911
 * James Herbert Wilkerson, 1911–1914
 * Charles F. Clyne, 1914–1922
 * Edwin A. Olson, 1922–1927
 * George E. Q. Johnson, 1927–1931
 * Dwight H. Green, 1931–1935
 * Michael L. Igoe, 1935–1938
 * William Joseph Campbell, 1938–1940
 * J. Albert Woll, 1940–1947
 * Otto Kerner Jr., 1947–1954
 * Irwin N. Cohen, 1954
 * Robert Tieken, 1954–1961
 * James P. O'Brien, 1961–1963
 * Frank E. McDonald, 1963–1964
 * Edward Hanrahan, 1964–1968
 * Tom Foran, 1968–1970
 * William J. Bauer, 1970–1971
 * James R. Thompson, 1971–1975
 * Samuel K. Skinner, 1975–1977
 * Thomas P. Sullivan, 1977–1981
 * Gregory C. Jones, 1981
 * Dan K. Webb, 1981–1985
 * Anton R. Valukas, 1985–1989
 * Ira A. Raphaelson, 1989–1990
 * Fred Foreman, 1990–1993
 * Michael J. Shepard, 1993
 * Jim Burns, 1993–1997
 * Scott R. Lassar, 1997–2001
 * Patrick Fitzgerald, 2001–2012
 * Gary S. Shapiro, 2012–2013
 * Zachary T. Fardon, 2013–2017
 * Joel R. Levin, 2017
 * John R. Lausch Jr., 2017–2023
 * Morris Pasqual, 2023–present