Description
The Administrative Office of the United States Courts, or the Administrative Office (AO) for short, is the administrative agency of the United States federal court system, established in 1939. The central support entity for the federal judicial branch, the AO provides a wide range of legislative (legislative assistance), administrative, legal, financial, management, program (program evaluation), and information technology support services to the federal courts.
It is directly supervised by the Judicial Conference of the United States, the body that sets the national and legislative policy of the federal judiciary and is composed of the chief justice, chief judge of each court of appeals, a district court judge from each regional judicial circuit, and the chief judge of the United States Court of International Trade.
The AO implements and executes Judicial Conference policies, as well as applicable federal statutes and regulations. The office facilitates communications within the judiciary and with Congress, the executive branch, and the public on behalf of the judiciary. Administrative Office lawyers, public administrators, accountants, systems engineers, analysts, architects, statisticians, and other staff provide a wide variety of professional services to meet the needs of judges and more than 32,000 Judiciary employees working in more than 800 locations across the United States.
