Judge Edmund A. Sargus Jr. to Receive the 2025 American Inns of Court Professionalism Award for the Sixth Circuit

ALEXANDRIA, Va.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Edmund A. Sargus has been selected to receive the 2025 American Inns of Court Professionalism Award for the Sixth Circuit. Sargus is a U.S. district judge for the Southern District of Ohio. He will receive the award from Chief Judge Jeffrey S. Sutton at the Sixth Circuit Judicial Conference in Memphis, Tennessee, in September.

“Judge Ed Sargus possesses sterling character and unquestioned integrity, and his career demonstrates peerless dedication to the legal profession and the rule of law,” writes, Chief Judge Sarah D. Morrison of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio, who nominated her colleague for the award.

Sargus has been a U.S. district judge for the Southern District of Ohio since 1996. He served as chief judge from 2015 to 2019. As chief judge, Sargus created a partnership with the Ohio Access to Justice Foundation, which encourages lawyers to provide pro bono services to district residents. He also co-founded Restored Citizens, a program that brings together judges, probation officers, clergy and graduates to mentor persons recently released from federal prison.

Before becoming a judge, Sargus was the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Ohio. Earlier in his career, he was in private practice, eventually becoming a partner at Burech & Sargus. He has served as a special counsel to Ohio’s attorney general; a member of the St. Clairsville, Ohio, City Council; the law director for the city of Bellaire, Ohio; and the solicitor of Powhatan Point, Ohio. He has also been a special deputy U.S. marshal.

Sargus is actively involved in his community. For more than a decade, he has served as a board member of House of Hope, a long-term residential addiction treatment center that assists patients without financial resources. He is also on the board of the Ohio Legal Assistance Program, a statewide program for lawyers with addiction or mental health issues.

Sargus has also hosted judges from around the world and has himself traveled to Thailand, the Republic of Georgia, Chile, and Brazil through the Congressional Office for International Leadership and the Department of State.

Sargus earned an undergraduate degree with honors in American history from Brown University in 1975. He earned his law degree from Case Western University School of Law in 1978. He has an honorary doctorate of humane letters from Muskingum College. He has long been an adjunct professor at The Ohio State University’s Moritz College of Law.

The American Inns of Court, headquartered in Alexandria, Virginia, inspires the legal community to advance the rule of law by achieving the highest level of professionalism through example, education, and mentoring. The organization’s membership includes nearly 30,000 federal, state, and local judges; lawyers; law professors; and law students in more than 350 chapters nationwide. More information is available at www.innsofcourt.org.