The Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts
Summary
The federal judiciary's own administrative office runs on a $107.0 million FY2026 budget and 524 direct staff -- about 31 cents per U.S. resident -- to handle pay, budgeting, IT, and audits for 2,483 judges and more than 27,000 court and public defender staff nationwide.
What is this organization?
What does it do?
The AO administers pay, personnel, budgeting, and IT for the courts: in FY2026 that means 2,483 active and senior judges and 27,720 court and public defender staff⧉, across 356 court units and 92 federal defender organizations⧉ in 767 facilities. It prepares and executes the judiciary's own budget request to Congress, audits how courts spend their share of the roughly $9.1 billion⧉ appropriated yearly, and runs the national systems courts use for case tracking and paying appointed defense counsel.
What does it cost to run — money and people?
Congress enacted $106,953,000⧉ for the AO's own Salaries and Expenses account in FY2026 -- $4.3 million above FY2025⧉, via the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2026⧉ -- funding 524 direct full-time staff⧉; counting positions paid from reimbursable programs like Defender Services, the office totals about 1,248 people. Against the Census Bureau's 341.8 million U.S. residents⧉ as of July 2025, that works out to about 31 cents per person -- a fraction of what running the courts costs, since this account funds only administrative overhead.
View data as table
| Program Direction and Policy Formulation | 123.2 | |
|---|---|---|
| Chief Information Officer | 86.4 | new activity line in FY2026, replacing Technology Services |
| Administrative Services | 56.6 | |
| Program Services | 42.4 |
Why is it good for society?
Before 1939, the executive branch ran the federal courts' own money and staff -- an arrangement contemporaries said created the threat of interference with the judicial process⧉, since the Justice Department managed court budgets while also arguing cases before those same courts. Centralizing administration inside the judiciary removed that conflict: courts now hire, budget, and account through an office answering to judges, not prosecutors. That is also what lets Congress get one coherent accounting of how the $9.1 billion appropriated to the courts each year actually gets spent, across more than 350 court units.
- The AO's own FY2026 budget ($107.0M, up $4.3M from FY2025) is a small fraction of the $9.2 billion Congress appropriates for the whole federal judiciary each year -- it funds administrative overhead, not the courts' own operations.
- 524 direct run pay, budgeting, IT, and audit functions for a judiciary of 2,483 judges and 27,720 court and public defender staff across 356 court units nationwide.
Your handles.* To report misconduct or a disability affecting a federal judge, use the Judicial Conduct and Disability complaint process each circuit's clerk's office administers. To look up an actual federal case, search PACER -- free to register, with per-document fees capped at $3 and waived for most users each quarter. The AO's own funding is set through Congress's Financial Services and General Government appropriations subcommittees, so the lever for its budget is your own member of Congress.
Sources(4) ▾
- Administrative Office of the United States Courts, Administrative Office of the United States Courts, Salaries and Expenses (Section 8, Fiscal Year 2027 Congressional Budget Justification) (2026-03-25) — The AO's own FY2027 congressional budget justification for its Salaries and Expenses account -- the most current dated document showing the FY2026 ENACTED appropriation, direct and total , obligations-by-activity breakdown, and FY2026 workload indicators (as opposed to the earlier FY2026 request document, which only shows the request figure). Source for this entry's budget and people KPIs, the activity chart, and the workload numbers in §2. Archive.org's Save Page Now endpoint returned a 520 error on one probe at access time and no existing snapshot was found via the availability API; the direct uscourts.gov link is used as the capture per this series' non-blocking hazard handling. uscourts.gov · original document
- Federal Judicial Center, Landmark Legislation: Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts (2026-07-16) — The Federal Judicial Center's own standing historical note on the Administrative Office Act of 1939 (53 Stat. 1223) -- source for this entry's founding statute, the judicial-independence rationale, and the pre-1939 Department of Justice conflict this entry's §4 cites as the counterfactual. The FJC is itself a judicial-branch agency (28 U.S.C. § 620) whose standing mandate includes writing the judiciary's own history; the page carries no separate revision date, so the access date is used. Archive.org's Save Page Now endpoint returned a 520 error on one probe (same outage affecting the other document above) and no existing snapshot was found; the direct fjc.gov link is used as the capture. fjc.gov · original document
- U.S. Census Bureau, U.S. Population Growth Slows Due to Historic Decline in Net International Migration (Vintage 2025 national population estimate) (2026-01-27) — The Census Bureau's own Vintage 2025 national population estimate release, giving the U.S. resident population as of July 1, 2025 -- the per-resident denominator for this entry's cost-per-person KPI, per better_metrics.md's sourced-denominator discipline. Archive.org's Save Page Now endpoint returned a 520 error on one probe and no existing snapshot was found; the direct census.gov link is used as the capture. census.gov · original document
- Congressional Research Service, Judiciary Budget Request for FY2027 (IF13206) (2026-04-20) — 's Table 1 itemizes FY2026-enacted and FY2027-request discretionary appropriations for every judiciary account, including the Administrative Office, citing the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2026 (P.L. 119-75) -- an independent cross-check, from a different publisher than doc-ao-fy2027-cbj, of this entry's FY2026-enacted AO budget figure and the total judiciary appropriation cited in §1. Direct congress.gov fetch returns HTTP 403 to automated clients; the EveryCRSReport.com mirror (a project that republishes 's own reports verbatim) is used as the capture and was fetched directly (HTTP 200). congress.gov · original document
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The Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts (AO) is the federal judiciary's own administrative arm, created when Congress established it in 1939⧉, giving the courts their first budgetary and personnel agency independent of the executive branch. Before then, the Justice Department ran court administration -- an arrangement judges said posed the threat of interference with the judicial process⧉, since was also the government's own most frequent litigant in those courts. The AO's appropriation runs under 28 U.S.C. §§ 601-613⧉, inside a judiciary of 12 U.S. courts of appeals and 94 district courts⧉.