The §2255 Custody Requirement: Who Can Still File

By Elizabeth Franklin-Best, Esq., and Christopher Zoukis, JD, MBA

Do you have to be in custody to file a § 2255 motion?

Yes if your federal sentence is still running in any form — prison, supervised release, or parole — measured on the day you file. Under Jones v. Cunningham, 371 U.S. 236 (1963), custody means restraints “not shared by the public generally,” not physical confinement. Once the sentence has fully expired, Maleng v. Cook, 490 U.S. 488 (1989), forecloses §2255 entirely.

Key takeaways on the § 2255 custody requirement

• Custody is jurisdictional, and it is measured on the day you file. Carafas v. LaVallee, 391 U.S. 234 (1968), holds that the applicant “must be ‘in custody’ when the application for habeas corpus is filed” — and that once jurisdiction attaches, it “is not defeated by the release of the petitioner prior to completion of proceedings.”
• Supervised release is custody. United States v. Brown, 117 F.3d 471 (11th Cir. 1997), holds that “as a person serving a term of supervised release, Brown was ‘in custody’ within the meaning of § 2255.” This is the single most misunderstood point on this page.
• A fully expired sentence is the end of §2255, even if the conviction still hurts you. Maleng v. Cook: “once the sentence imposed for a conviction has completely expired, the collateral consequences of that conviction are not themselves sufficient to render an individual ‘in custody’ for the purposes of a habeas attack upon it.”
• Consecutive sentences are viewed in the aggregate. Peyton v. Rowe, 391 U.S. 54 (1968), holds a prisoner serving consecutive sentences is “in custody” under any one of them; Garlotte v. Fordice, 515 U.S. 39 (1995), extends that to a sentence in the series that has already been served.
• A detainer for a future federal sentence can supply custody. Braden v. 30th Judicial Circuit Court of Kentucky, 410 U.S. 484 (1973), plus Rule 1(b) of the Rules Governing Section 2255 Proceedings, which reaches a person in state or other federal custody who is “subject to future custody under a judgment of the district court.”
• Money is not custody. A fine or restitution order does not satisfy §2255 — Kaminski v. United States, 339 F.3d 84 (2d Cir. 2003) — and neither does civil immigration detention after a completed criminal sentence.

Am I in custody for §2255 purposes?

Start with the statutory text, because every answer on this page is an application of one clause. Section 2255(a) provides:

“A prisoner in custody under sentence of a court established by Act of Congress claiming the right to be released upon the ground that the sentence was imposed in violation of the Constitution or laws of the United States, or that the court was without jurisdiction to impose such sentence, or that the sentence was in excess of the maximum authorized by law, or is otherwise subject to collateral attack, may move the court which imposed the sentence to vacate, set aside or correct the sentence.”

Three requirements sit in that first line, and each one does work.

“In custody.” Some restraint on liberty must exist. Not necessarily prison, but something.

“Under sentence of a court established by Act of Congress.” The restraint has to flow from the federal criminal sentence you are attacking. Being locked up is not enough if the lock is somebody else’s. A person in state prison is in custody — just not custody under a federal sentence, which is why the remedy for a state conviction is a different statute, covered at 28 U.S.C. § 2254. A person held by ICE pending removal is confined — but by a civil immigration authority, not under the criminal judgment.

“Claiming the right to be released.” The motion must seek relief from the custody, which is why a §2255 aimed only at a money judgment fails even when the movant is in prison.

Courts treat the custody requirement as jurisdictional. That word matters practically: a jurisdictional defect cannot be waived by the government, cannot be excused for good cause, and cannot be cured by the strength of the claim. It is also something a court can raise on its own, at any stage. What §2255 is and what else it requires is set out at what is a 2255 motion.

Table 1. Are you “in custody” for §2255? The five situations that actually arise

Your situation	In custody under §2255(a)?	Governing authority	What it means for your filing
Serving the federal prison sentence — BOP facility, halfway house, or home confinement under the federal judgment	Yes	28 U.S.C. §2255(a); Rule 1(a), Rules Governing Section 2255 Proceedings	The threshold is met. The live question is the one-year deadline, not custody
On supervised release or federal parole — sentence served, still reporting	Yes	Jones v. Cunningham, 371 U.S. 236 (1963) (parole); United States v. Brown, 117 F.3d 471 (11th Cir. 1997) (supervised release)	Still eligible. The clock, however, has usually been running for years. Coram nobis is not available while you are in custody
Detainer lodged for a federal sentence you have not begun — currently held by a state or another federal court	Yes	Braden v. 30th Judicial Circuit Court of Kentucky, 410 U.S. 484 (1973); Rule 1(b), Rules Governing Section 2255 Proceedings	You may attack the not-yet-served federal judgment now. File in the district that imposed it, not the district holding you
Serving consecutive sentences — including a sentence in the series already completed	Yes	Peyton v. Rowe, 391 U.S. 54 (1968); Garlotte v. Fordice, 515 U.S. 39 (1995)	Sentences are viewed “as a continuous stream,” not as discrete segments. You are in custody under all of them until all are served
Sentence fully expired — prison, supervised release and parole all complete	No	Maleng v. Cook, 490 U.S. 488 (1989)	§2255 is unavailable, regardless of the merits. The remaining vehicle is coram nobis under United States v. Morgan, 346 U.S. 502 (1954)

Table 1. The §2255 custody threshold by fact pattern. Custody is measured on the day the motion is filed — Carafas v. LaVallee, 391 U.S. 234 (1968). Custody and timeliness are separate requirements and both must be satisfied.

Why “custody” does not mean prison

The most common mistake on this page’s subject is assuming custody means bars. It has not meant that since 1963.

Jones v. Cunningham, 371 U.S. 236 (1963), is the decision that broke the equation. A Virginia prisoner released on parole sought habeas relief, and the State argued the case was moot because he was no longer confined. The Supreme Court disagreed, holding that “besides physical imprisonment, there are other restraints on a man’s liberty, restraints not shared by the public generally, which have been thought sufficient in the English-speaking world to support the issuance of habeas corpus.”

The Court then cataloged what those restraints looked like in that case. The parolee had to obtain permission to leave the community, to change residence, or to own or operate a motor vehicle; he had to report monthly; he had to permit his parole officer to visit his home or workplace at any time and follow that officer’s instructions and advice. That combination amounted to “significant restraints on petitioner’s liberty because of his conviction and sentence, which are in addition to those imposed by the State upon the public generally.”

That phrase — not shared by the public generally — is the operative test, and it has proven durable. In Hensley v. Municipal Court, 411 U.S. 345 (1973), the Court held a petitioner released on his own recognizance pending execution of sentence was in custody, because he was under an obligation to appear “at all times and places as ordered” and therefore “cannot come and go as he pleases.” The Third Circuit held in Barry v. Bergen County Probation Department, 128 F.3d 152 (3d Cir. 1997), that a 500-hour community-service obligation was custody, because it “significantly restrained his liberty.”

There is a counterweight the same cases state, and it is the reason the doctrine has a floor. Hensley: “[t]he custody requirement of the habeas corpus statute is designed to preserve the writ of habeas corpus as a remedy for severe restraints on individual liberty,” and its use is “limited to cases of special urgency, leaving more conventional remedies for cases in which the restraints on liberty are neither severe nor immediate.” Something has to actually restrain you. A conviction’s reputational consequences, its effect on employment, its effect on a professional license — those are burdens, but they are not custody.

Does supervised release count as custody?

Yes, and this is the answer most readers of this page came for.

Almost every federal sentence of more than a year carries a term of supervised release that begins the day you walk out of the institution. People routinely describe themselves as “out” or “done,” and their families describe them the same way. For §2255 purposes they are neither. Supervised release is part of the sentence, and it carries the same kind of restraints Jones v. Cunningham found sufficient: reporting requirements, travel restrictions, permission to change residence or employment, conditions on association, drug testing, and the standing possibility of revocation and return to prison.

The Eleventh Circuit stated the holding directly in United States v. Brown, 117 F.3d 471 (11th Cir. 1997): “as a person serving a term of supervised release, Brown was ‘in custody’ within the meaning of § 2255 when he filed his petition in the district court.” The court reasoned from Jones v. Cunningham and noted that the Third Circuit had “held expressly that supervised release satisfies the ‘in custody’ requirement of § 2255.”

Brown also delivers the corollary that catches people. Because he was in custody, §2255 was available — and because §2255 was available, the writ of error coram nobis was not. Coram nobis is “limited to cases in which no statutory remedy is available or adequate,” so “[i]f Brown was ‘in custody’ within the meaning of § 2255 when he filed his appeal, then the statutory remedies of that provision were available to him, and coram nobis relief was unavailable as a matter of law.” The two remedies do not overlap. They are sequential: §2255 while you are in custody, coram nobis after — and the boundary between them is exactly the line this page draws.

The practical consequence of all this cuts both ways. Good news: if you are on supervised release, the courthouse door is open. Hard news: it has been open for a while, and the §2255 one-year clock does not wait for you to notice. Someone finishing a ten-year sentence and starting five years of supervised release is usually many years past the ordinary limitations trigger. That computation is worked at 2255 statute of limitations, and if the deadline has already run, whether anything preserves the motion is at equitable tolling.

Applied Insight — Christopher Zoukis, JD, MBA, Managing Director: The call we get most often on this subject starts with someone saying they are “off paper.” Almost always the next question settles it: what is the last date on your judgment, and has your probation officer discharged you in writing? People count from their release from the institution, and that is the wrong date — the sentence includes the supervision term. In the other direction, someone still reporting to a PO will say §2255 is closed to them because they are not incarcerated, and that is wrong too. Before anyone theorizes about a claim, we pull the judgment and confirm the supervision end date, because that one line decides which statute the case is even about.

Custody is measured on the day you file

Timing on the custody question is fixed, and knowing the fixed point resolves most edge cases.

Carafas v. LaVallee, 391 U.S. 234 (1968), holds that “[t]he federal habeas corpus statute requires that the applicant must be ‘in custody’ when the application for habeas corpus is filed.” Maleng restates the same rule for the modern era: the statutory language requires “that the habeas petitioner be ‘in custody’ under the conviction or sentence under attack at the time his petition is filed.”

The corollary is protective. Carafas also holds that “once the federal jurisdiction has attached in the District Court, it is not defeated by the release of the petitioner prior to completion of proceedings on such application.” A movant who files while on supervised release and is discharged six months later does not lose the motion. The court keeps jurisdiction and decides it. And the case does not become moot on release, because the “collateral consequences” of a conviction — Carafas listed the inability to vote, to serve as a juror, to hold union office, or to engage in certain businesses — give a person “a substantial stake in the judgment of conviction which survives the satisfaction of the sentence.”

Notice the asymmetry, because it is the hinge of the whole doctrine. Collateral consequences are enough to defeat mootness after custody ends, and not enough to create custody in the first place. Maleng drew that distinction expressly: the Court rested Carafas “not on the collateral consequences of the conviction, but on the fact that the petitioner had been in physical custody under the challenged conviction at the time the petition was filed.”

The practical instruction is blunt. If your supervision term is close to expiring and you have a §2255 claim, the filing date is the emergency. A motion filed one day before discharge is heard. The same motion filed one day after is dismissed for want of jurisdiction. The prison-mailbox timing rule can matter enormously here — see prisoner mailbox rule — and the mechanics of getting a motion correctly on file are at how to file a 2255 motion.

What if I am serving consecutive sentences?

You are in custody under all of them, including one you have not started and one you have already finished.

Peyton v. Rowe, 391 U.S. 54 (1968), overruled the old “prematurity doctrine” of McNally v. Hill and held that “a prisoner serving consecutive sentences is ‘in custody’ under any one of them.” The Court’s reasoning was practical: “in common understanding ‘custody’ comprehends respondents’ status for the entire duration of their imprisonment,” so a prisoner facing a 30-year and a 20-year term consecutively is, in ordinary terms, in custody for 50 years. The Court also pointed at the cost of the old rule — forcing a prisoner to wait years to litigate meant “dimmed memories or the death of witnesses,” which harms both sides.

Garlotte v. Fordice, 515 U.S. 39 (1995), completed the picture from the other end. The petitioner attacked the conviction underlying the sentence that ran first in a consecutive series — a sentence he had already served, but one that still postponed his parole eligibility. The Court held: “Garlotte remains ‘in custody’ under all of his sentences until all are served, and now may attack the conviction underlying the sentence scheduled to run first in the series.” Following Peyton, the Court said, “we do not disaggregate Garlotte’s sentences, but comprehend them as composing a continuous stream.”

For federal defendants this most often matters in the stacked-sentence context: a firearm count running consecutively to a drug count, or a federal term ordered consecutive to an undischarged state term. The claim can be brought against any judgment in the stream while the stream is still running.

There is a limit that Garlotte itself states, and it is the boundary with the next section. The Court reaffirmed that “the potential use of a conviction to enhance a sentence for subsequent offenses did not suffice to render a person ‘in custody'” once that conviction’s own sentence has fully expired, quoting Maleng’s statement that the Court had “never extended [custody] to the situation where a habeas petitioner suffers no present restraint from a conviction.” Consecutive sentences in one continuous stream are one thing; an old, finished conviction that makes a new sentence longer is another.

What if I have a detainer?

A detainer lodged for a federal sentence you have not begun serving can put you in custody under that federal judgment — and Rule 1(b) of the Rules Governing Section 2255 Proceedings says so in terms most competitor pages never quote.

Rule 1(b) extends the §2255 rules to “a person in custody under a judgment of a state court or another federal court, and subject to future custody under a judgment of the district court,” who seeks a determination that “future custody under a judgment of the district court would violate the Constitution or laws of the United States,” that the court lacked jurisdiction, that the sentence exceeded the maximum, or that the judgment is otherwise subject to collateral review. The advisory committee note is explicit about the purpose: there had been “a split among the courts as to whether a person currently in state custody may use a § 2255 motion to obtain relief from a federal judgment under which he will be subjected to custody in the future,” and “[i]t is intended that these rules settle the matter in favor of the prisoner’s being able to file a § 2255 motion for relief under those circumstances.”

The Supreme Court authority behind that rule is Braden v. 30th Judicial Circuit Court of Kentucky, 410 U.S. 484 (1973), which held that a prisoner held in Alabama and subject to a Kentucky detainer was “in custody” for habeas purposes as to the Kentucky charge, because the Alabama warden was acting “as the agent of the Commonwealth of Kentucky in holding the petitioner pursuant to the Kentucky detainer.” Maleng applied Braden and Peyton together to reach the same result across sovereigns, holding a prisoner serving a federal sentence was in custody under state sentences he had not begun where the State “placed a detainer with the federal authorities.”

Two practical notes. First, the advisory committee note to Rule 2 confirms you do not need to name your present physical custodian as a respondent or invent a party structure: “[t]he court hearing his motion attacking the future custody can exercise jurisdiction over those having him in present custody without the use of artificial pleading devices.” Second, venue is the sentencing court. A §2255 motion is filed in “the court which imposed the sentence,” so the district holding you physically is not where the motion goes — a distinction that separates §2255 from a §2241 petition, which is covered at 28 U.S.C. § 2241.

One caution on scope: courts distinguish between a detainer reflecting a lodged judgment and a bare administrative notice of interest. A federal judgment with a detainer behind it is the situation Rule 1(b) addresses. A notification that some agency would like to be told when you are released is a weaker thing, and it is where the arguments happen.

Can I file a §2255 after my sentence is over?

No. This is the hard boundary, and the honest answer is worth more than a hopeful one.

Maleng v. Cook, 490 U.S. 488 (1989), holds that a petitioner is not “in custody” under a conviction “when the sentence imposed for that conviction has fully expired at the time his petition is filed.” And the Court closed the most attractive workaround in the same opinion: “once the sentence imposed for a conviction has completely expired, the collateral consequences of that conviction are not themselves sufficient to render an individual ‘in custody’ for the purposes of a habeas attack upon it.”

That rule holds even when the old conviction is doing real, ongoing damage — including when it is used to enhance a sentence you are serving right now.

Maleng did leave one door ajar, and it is important to describe it accurately, because a lot of published guidance overstates what is behind it. The Court said a pro se petition attacking an expired conviction “can be read as asserting a challenge to the [current] sentences, as enhanced by the allegedly invalid prior conviction,” and that this satisfies the custody threshold. But the Court added that its holding was “limited to the narrow issue of ‘custody’ for subject-matter jurisdiction of the habeas court.”

Twelve years later the Court explained what that limit means, in a pair of decisions handed down the same day. Daniels v. United States, 532 U.S. 374 (2001), is the §2255 case and controls federal prisoners directly. It holds that where “a prior conviction used to enhance a federal sentence is no longer open to direct or collateral attack in its own right because the defendant failed to pursue those remedies while they were available (or because the defendant did so unsuccessfully), then that defendant is without recourse. The presumption of validity that attached to the prior conviction at the time of sentencing is conclusive, and the defendant may not collaterally attack his prior conviction through a motion under § 2255.” Lackawanna County District Attorney v. Coss, 532 U.S. 394 (2001), holds the same for state prisoners under §2254.

Both recognize one exception, narrow and specific: a prior conviction obtained in violation of the right to appointed counsel under Gideon v. Wainwright. Daniels adds a procedural condition that swallows most of the exception in practice — a defendant “may challenge a prior conviction as the product of a Gideon violation in a §2255 motion, but generally only if he raised that claim at his federal sentencing proceeding.” Procedural default doctrine applies, and it is covered at procedural default.

So the sequence is: an expired prior can get you past the custody threshold if you frame the motion as an attack on the current enhanced sentence, and then you generally lose on the merits anyway unless the prior was a Gideon case you preserved at sentencing. Stating that plainly is more useful than describing Maleng as an opening.

What is not custody

Four categories come up repeatedly, and none of them satisfies §2255.

A fine. Barry v. Bergen County Probation Department, 128 F.3d 152 (3d Cir. 1997), collects the authority: “the imposition of a fine or restitution does not constitute ‘custody.'” The reasoning is that a monetary obligation implicates property rather than liberty.

Restitution. For federal movants the leading statement is Kaminski v. United States, 339 F.3d 84 (2d Cir. 2003), which holds that “§ 2255 may not be used to bring collateral challenges addressed solely to noncustodial punishments” like a restitution order, because §2255 “affords relief only to those prisoners who ‘claim[] the right to be released’ from custody.” Kaminski adds the trap: a restitution claim is not rescued by packaging it with a custodial claim. “Collateral relief from noncustodial punishments is not made more readily available to a petitioner just because that petitioner happens at the time to be subject also to custodial penalties.” A movant who is in prison and challenges both his sentence and his restitution order will have the restitution portion dismissed for lack of jurisdiction while the custodial portion proceeds.

Immigration detention after the criminal sentence ends. Being physically held by ICE is confinement, but it is civil immigration custody, not custody “under sentence of a court established by Act of Congress.” The leading circuit statement is Ogunwomoju v. United States, 512 F.3d 69 (2d Cir. 2008) — decided under §2254, as to a state conviction — holding that “immigration detention is not ‘custody’ for the purposes of establishing jurisdiction to consider habeas petitions,” and that “[r]emoval proceedings are at best a collateral consequence of conviction.” District courts apply the same reasoning to §2255 movants whose federal sentence has fully expired, and dismissals on this fact pattern are routine. If you are still serving supervised release, you remain in custody under the federal judgment even while physically held by ICE; if the supervision term has ended, ICE detention does not revive §2255. The Sixth Amendment claim about immigration advice itself is a different subject, covered at Padilla v. Kentucky.

Collateral consequences generally. Loss of the vote, loss of a professional license, sex-offender registration, immigration exposure, employment barriers, firearms disability. Maleng forecloses all of them as a basis for custody. That is not a comment on how serious they are. It is a statement about which statute reaches them.

Table 2. What does not satisfy the §2255 custody requirement

Consequence	Custody?	Authority	The correct vehicle instead
Fine	No	Barry v. Bergen County Probation Dep’t, 128 F.3d 152 (3d Cir. 1997)	Direct appeal; or coram nobis if the conviction itself is attacked and custody has ended
Restitution order	No	Kaminski v. United States, 339 F.3d 84 (2d Cir. 2003)	Direct appeal; the restitution portion of a §2255 is dismissed even if custodial claims proceed
ICE detention after the federal sentence has expired	No	Ogunwomoju v. United States, 512 F.3d 69 (2d Cir. 2008) (§2254 posture); Maleng v. Cook, 490 U.S. 488 (1989)	Coram nobis, if the federal conviction is the target and continuing consequences are shown
Sex-offender registration, loss of the vote, license loss, firearms disability	No	Maleng v. Cook, 490 U.S. 488 (1989)	Coram nobis, or a non-habeas remedy specific to the disability
A completed prior conviction used to enhance a current sentence	Threshold only	Maleng v. Cook; merits foreclosed by Daniels v. United States, 532 U.S. 374 (2001)	Frame as an attack on the current enhanced sentence; merits available only in the narrow Gideon exception

Table 2. Non-custodial consequences and the correct vehicle. A consequence’s severity is not the test; the test is whether it is a present restraint on liberty imposed by the federal criminal sentence under attack.

Custody and the one-year deadline are separate requirements

Both must be satisfied, independently, and satisfying one says nothing about the other.

Custody is jurisdictional and is measured at filing. The limitation period in §2255(f) is a separate one-year clock that runs from the latest of four statutory trigger dates. A movant on supervised release ten years after sentencing is comfortably in custody and almost certainly out of time. A movant who was sentenced last month and is still in a holdover facility is comfortably in time and equally comfortably in custody. Nothing about the first fact tells you anything about the second.

The two also fail differently. A late motion is dismissed as untimely, and equitable tolling or a later trigger date can sometimes save it. A motion filed after custody ends is dismissed for want of jurisdiction, and nothing saves it — there is no equitable exception to a jurisdictional prerequisite. That asymmetry is why, when both clocks are close, the custody date is the one to file against.

The deadline computation is at 2255 statute of limitations, the full post-conviction calendar at federal appeal deadline, and the AEDPA restrictions that produced the one-year rule at AEDPA. If you have filed before, the additional gate is at second or successive 2255.

Applied Insight — Elizabeth Franklin-Best, Esq., Principal Attorney: In an intake we treat custody as a documented fact, not a client statement. The judgment tells us the supervision term; the BOP or probation records tell us when it started and whether it was tolled; a revocation somewhere in the middle can change everything. When a supervision end date is weeks away, that reorders the whole engagement — we file to preserve jurisdiction and develop the record afterward under the Rules Governing Section 2255 Proceedings, rather than letting a fully investigated motion arrive one day after the door closes. A perfect motion filed a day late is not a motion.

What can I file if I am no longer in custody?

A petition for a writ of error coram nobis, in the same district court that convicted you.

United States v. Morgan, 346 U.S. 502 (1954), settled that §2255 did not abolish this older remedy for people no longer in custody. The Court held “that the District Court has power to grant such a motion,” reasoning that “[n]owhere in the history of Section 2255 do we find any purpose to impinge upon prisoners’ rights of collateral attack upon their convictions.”

Morgan also set the bar, and it is high. Relief is available “only under circumstances compelling such action to achieve justice,” for errors “of the most fundamental character,” and only where “no other remedy [is] then available and sound reasons exist[] for failure to seek appropriate earlier relief.” There is a presumption of regularity: “[i]t is presumed the proceedings were correct and the burden rests on the accused to show otherwise.”

Two boundaries follow directly from this page’s rule, and both catch filers. First, coram nobis and §2255 do not overlap. United States v. Brown, 117 F.3d 471 (11th Cir. 1997), holds that if §2255 is available because you are still in custody, “coram nobis relief [is] unavailable as a matter of law.” Second, a federal court cannot issue coram nobis as to a state judgment — the Second Circuit said so in Ogunwomoju — so a person attacking a state conviction after custody ends is in a different system entirely.

The full standard, the circuit variations, and what “continuing consequences” a petitioner must show are at coram nobis. The broader map of what post-conviction relief can and cannot change is at post conviction relief, and the realistic odds and timelines across §2255 generally are at 2255 motion success rate.

If you are in custody and your claim depends on facts outside the existing record — what counsel said, what an investigator never did — whether the court will hold a hearing to develop those facts is addressed at 2255 evidentiary hearing, and how to assemble the underlying record before you file is at getting your transcripts, PSR, and file. What claims a court will refuse to hear even when custody is satisfied is at claims not cognizable 2255.

Why work with Elizabeth Franklin-Best, P.C.

Custody questions look simple and are not. A supervision term tolled by a state sentence, a revocation that reset the clock, a detainer whose paperwork does not match the judgment, a stacked §924(c) count running consecutively to a term that finished years ago — each of those changes the answer, and each of them is a records question before it is a legal one.

Elizabeth Franklin-Best founded Elizabeth Franklin-Best, P.C. in 2019 and practices federal criminal appeals and post-conviction relief nationwide, on an intentionally small caseload. She is admitted to the U.S. Supreme Court and twelve of the thirteen U.S. Courts of Appeals — every regional circuit (1st–11th) plus the D.C. Circuit — and has appeared pro hac vice in federal district courts from Montana to Florida. Over more than 20 years she has handled more than 330 federal proceedings, over 100 of them appeals, with sixteen published decisions as counsel of record. She is recognized by Best Lawyers in America 2026 for Appellate Practice and by Chambers USA 2026 for Litigation: White-Collar Crime & Government Investigations.

Christopher Zoukis, JD, MBA, is the firm’s Managing Director and a nationally recognized federal prison expert — the author of the Federal Prison Handbook, Directory of Federal Prisons, Prison Education Guide, and College for Convicts, and Chairman of the Board of the Human Rights Defense Center. He earned his J.D. at UC Davis School of Law after serving roughly a decade in the federal Bureau of Prisons. His work on BOP sentence computation and supervision records is often what establishes the custody dates a motion depends on; the legal strategy and every filing are handled by Elizabeth and the firm’s attorneys.

The firm serves clients nationwide from offices in Columbia and Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, and files in whichever district imposed the sentence. Who handles this work after the appeal is over is described at post conviction attorney and federal 2255 motion lawyer.

Find out whether your §2255 window is still open

If you are on supervised release, the door is open and the clock has been running. If your supervision term ends soon, the filing date is the thing that matters most.

Schedule a consultation · Call: (843) 620-1100

Bring the judgment, the date you were released from the institution, and your probation officer’s contact information. Those three items usually answer the custody question in one call.

Frequently Asked Questions About the § 2255 Custody Requirement

Reviewed for legal accuracy by Elizabeth Franklin-Best, Esq., Principal Attorney·September 2026