Honorable Zia Faruqui

Federal Magistrate District of Columbia

The Honorable Zia Faruqui has been serving as a federal magistrate judge for the District of Columbia since September 2020. During that time, he has presided over hundreds of cases related to the January 6th breach of the U.S. Capitol. Prior to his judicial appointment, Judge Faruqui was a federal prosecutor, first in the United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Missouri and then in the District of Columbia. Over the span of twelve years of federal service as an ASUA, he prosecuted numerous cases, many of which centered on the nexus between financial crimes and national security. His case work included counter terror-finance actions, including by implementing denial of service attacks against, and site takeovers of, websites used by ISIS and Al Qaeda to collect cryptocurrency. Additionally, he led the takedown of the largest ever darknet site dedicated to child exploitation which was funded by cryptocurrency. Judge Faruqui is a board member for Jobs for Homeless People, a non-profit that provides housing and vocational training to people in the D.C. metropolitan area. He also served as a Muslim-outreach coordinator for the Department of Justice and as an adjunct professor at Harris-Stowe State University where he taught classes on criminal rehabilitation, and Georgetown University where he teaches constitutional law.