After hearing Houston businessman R. Allen Stanford complain that he’s having trouble preparing for his upcoming criminal trial and civil suits because he is in prison, the federal judge overseeing Stanford’s insurance coverage suit promised to talk to U.S. District Judge David Hittner, who is handling Stanford’s criminal case and has refused to allow Stanford out of prison on the ground he is a flight risk.

“I will urge Judge Hittner to reconsider,” U.S. District Judge Nancy Atlas told Stanford during a nearly three-hour hearing Tuesday morning. “The only way I can see a release … is there would be a very, very, very tight or close house confinement,” she told Stanford, who represents himself pro se in Laura Pendergest-Holt, et al. v. Certain Underwriters at Lloyd’s of London, et al.