Federal defender offices, which lost approximately 400 employees because of last year’s mandatory budget cuts known as sequestration, have enough money in this year’s budget to begin backfilling most of those positions, court officials said on March 11.
Following the biannual meeting of the Judicial Conference of the United States, Chief Judge William Traxler Jr. of the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, chairman of the judicial conference’s executive committee, said Congress’ fiscal year 2014 appropriation to the judiciary would allow officials to fill about 350 of those jobs.
