Why your case is in federal court, not state court
If federal agents arrested you in Santa Clara County, or a grand jury in San Jose named you in an indictment, your case will be heard in a United States district court, not a California state courthouse. The reason is one short statute, which provides:
"The district courts of the United States shall have original jurisdiction, exclusive of the courts of the States, of all offenses against the laws of the United States."
The word exclusive does the work. When the charge is a violation of federal law, no state court shares the case. The prosecution is brought by the United States Attorney's Office, the judge is a federal district judge, and sentencing runs under federal law. Our Northern District of California page maps the whole district, and our federal criminal process hub walks through each stage from arrest to sentencing.
A caution that applies to every page on this site. Penalties shown here are statutory maximums or guideline ranges, never predictions about any one person. The facts of a case change everything.
The Northern District, and why your hearing is in San Jose
Congress drew the Northern District as fifteen counties and fixed four places where the court sits. On the counties, the statute provides:
"Northern District comprises the counties of Alameda, Contra Costa, Del Norte, Humboldt, Lake, Marin, Mendocino, Monterey, Napa, San Benito, Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, San Francisco, San Mateo, and Sonoma."
On the court sites, it provides:
"Court for the Northern District shall be held at Eureka, Oakland, San Francisco, and San Jose."
That second sentence is why a San Jose case stays in San Jose. If your case comes from conduct in Santa Clara County or the surrounding South Bay counties of San Benito, Santa Cruz, and Monterey, your hearings happen at the San Jose courthouse rather than in San Francisco or Oakland. The court's own locations page confirms the district operates out of four locations: San Francisco at 450 Golden Gate Avenue, Oakland at 1301 Clay Street, San Jose at 280 South 1st Street, and McKinleyville at 3140 Boeing Avenue up north. Cases from the northern and East Bay counties go to the courthouses described on our San Francisco page and our Oakland page. Check the caption of your papers before you drive anywhere.
The San Jose courthouse on South 1st Street
The San Jose site is the Robert F. Peckham Federal Building and United States Courthouse at 280 South 1st Street, San Jose, CA 95113. The clerk's office sits in Room 2112 on the second floor, and the court lists (408) 535-5363 as the clerk number for San Jose. The jury office is also on the second floor and can be reached at (408) 535-5393.
Hours matter here because the desk and the building keep different schedules. The front desk is open 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. Public access to the building runs 7:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., and the court filing drop box keeps those same building hours. If you are reporting as a juror, bring your parking receipt from the ACE garage at 201 South 4th Street to the jury office for validation, and note that the garage cannot accommodate oversized vehicles or motorcycles.
Your papers should tell you which courtroom to enter, including the floor and room number. If they do not, or if the notice is unclear, call the clerk number above rather than guessing. Federal buildings run separate security lines and locked elevator banks, and time spent in the wrong line is time you do not get back.
Getting through the door on your court date
Plan for a federal building, not an ordinary errand downtown. Bring a photo ID and every page of the summons, indictment, or notice you received, and arrive early enough to clear screening with time left to find your courtroom. Weapons, cameras, and recording devices are restricted in federal courthouses, so leave anything questionable behind. Check a map and parking information the night before rather than assuming street parking near South 1st Street will cooperate. If you were arrested and released with a date to appear, read our page on federal arrest before that date so the first appearance does not surprise you.
Who prosecutes a San Jose federal case
The court and the prosecution are separate. The judge decides motions, runs the trial, and imposes sentence. The charges are brought by the United States Attorney's Office for the Northern District of California, which describes its district as stretching from Del Norte County in the north to Monterey County in the south, with three major metropolitan areas in San Francisco, Oakland, and San Jose, more than 300 public companies centered on Silicon Valley, and nearly 9 million people who live and work there. That Silicon Valley concentration is the reason this courthouse sees its share of technology and trade secret cases alongside the fraud, drug, and firearms cases found in every district. The office lists a San Jose contact number of (408) 535-5061, alongside numbers for San Francisco and Oakland. No attorney, judge, prosecutor, or client is named anywhere on this page, and that is deliberate. What matters is the office and the process, not any one person.
What happens first, and what comes after
The first decisions in a federal case come fast. At the first appearance the judge addresses release, and detention fights are litigated under the standards explained on our detention hearings page. If the case proceeds by indictment, read our indictment page. Sentencing, if it comes to that, runs under federal law described on our federal sentencing page. And if the trial court gets the law wrong, the appeal goes to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, the circuit Congress assigned to California, since the courts of appeals have jurisdiction of appeals from final decisions of the district courts. Appeals run on strict deadlines measured from the judgment, so read our federal appeals page early rather than after time has run.