The federal courthouse in Danville has languished so long without renovations and necessary security upgrades that it will cease operations, becoming the second courthouse in the judicial district to close in the span of about two years.
Beginning Saturday, no new cases will be filed at this courthouse, according to an announcement posted late Friday on the court’s website.
“For security and safety reasons,” the announcement said, “the judges of the US District Court for the Western District of Virginia asked [the General Service Administration] to release our space in the Dan Daniel Building, effective no later than December 31, 2025. To be clear, the Court is not asking that the Danville division be closed or that operations cease in Danville. Rather, the Court seeks a safe and secure facility for our Danville division.”
“Until that time,” the announcement said, new cases that would have been filed in the former Danville division will be filed in Lynchburg or Roanoke, depending on where they originated, and existing Danville division cases will be reassigned.
The courthouse opened in 1932 and is located on the second floor of a Danville post office building.
The U.S. General Services Administration, the entity that manages federal property, leases space from the U.S. Postal Service, which owns the building, to operate the courthouse.
This means that the USPS needs to sign off on any renovations or improvement projects. Negotiations between the GSA and USPS about this have been prolonged and largely unproductive, said federal Judge Thomas Cullen in a 2022 interview about the courthouse.
Cullen has been traveling to the Danville federal courthouse to hear cases for over 15 years.
In that time, there have been “no meaningful renovations” to the building, he said.
The courtroom itself is a large, well-lit high-ceilinged space in good condition. But the same can’t be said for the rest of the floor.
There are empty rooms with peeling paint, forgotten furniture and typewriters that haven’t been used in decades. When it rains hard, the ceiling leaks and buckets are placed throughout the floor to catch dripping water.
In addition to these issues, inadequate security was a paramount concern at the courthouse.
It had been over three years since Danville’s federal courthouse had heard a criminal trial involving defendants or witnesses who were in custody because security measures were not up to snuff.
There’s just one small holding cell in the building for people who are in custody, which becomes an issue when there are two or more in-custody defendants testifying against each other.
The holding cell has no bathroom or sink, so anyone in custody must be taken to the same bathroom that the jury and general public use, out in the hallways.
At the entryway of the second floor, where the courthouse is located, only a church pew separates the general public from the holding cell and the courtroom. There’s a metal detector and security guards, but no plexiglass, which is usually a standard security measure, Cullen said.
The building also lacks a sally port, or secure entrance where marshals can bring in-custody individuals safely into the building.
About three years ago, the U.S. Marshals Service, which is responsible for protecting federal courthouses and judges and for transporting defendants to court, decided to halt certain criminal trials at this location due to the inadequate security.
Instead, the city’s circuit court tried criminal trials with people in custody.
The Danville federal courthouse served the cities of Danville and Martinsville, as well as Henry, Patrick, Pittsylvania, Halifax and Charlotte counties.
The courthouse is in the same judicial district as the Big Stone Gap federal courthouse, which closed in 2023.
“To have one judicial district close two courthouses within a short period of time, that would be a big deal,” Cullen said in 2022. “Given Danville’s history, given the fact that this division is the most demographically diverse of any district that we have in the western part of Virginia, we should have a Danville division.”
But after years without a change to the building’s security, the judicial district is releasing the space back to the USPS, effective at the end of the year.
