US judge blocks Trump administration's plan to scrap FBI headquarters move to Maryland

A federal judge on Monday halted a Trump administration decision to move the new FBI headquarters from Maryland to Washington, D.C., rather than the previously chosen site in Greenbelt, Maryland. US District Judge Theodore Chuang ruled that the administration had unlawfully abandoned plans to build the FBI headquarters in Greenbelt and instead redirected funds approved by Congress for that project to the Ronald Reagan Building in Washington.

The judge noted that the selection of the Reagan Building violated congressional measures passed in 2022 and 2023, which required the General Services Administration to choose a site outside Washington from a shortlist of three locations. The ruling allows Maryland to resume the FBI headquarters project in Greenbelt, with Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown praising the decision as fulfilling a congressional promise and bringing jobs, investment, and opportunity to Maryland.

The FBI did not comment on the ruling. For nearly 15 years, the federal government has been working on plans for a new FBI headquarters, receiving funding from Congress for the project, which would relocate the FBI from its current location in the J. Edgar Hoover Building. Congress requires the General Services Administration, which oversees federal real estate, to select a site for the project from three suburban locations outside Washington: Greenbelt, Landover, Maryland, or Springfield, Virginia.

The GSA in 2023, under Democratic President Joe Biden, selected Greenbelt. However, the Trump administration reversed those plans in July 2025, proposing to relocate the FBI to the existing Ronald Reagan Building, claiming it would be cost-effective and save billions of dollars. The Reagan Building currently houses US Customs and Border Protection and previously had the US Agency for International Development as a tenant before the Trump administration dismantled the agency last year.