Federal Public Defender is hiring and moving into LA Times Building

The Office of the Federal Public Defender in the Central District of California is on a hiring campaign for all positions in what is the nation's largest defense office, and is looking forward to a new home next year in the Los Angeles Times Building, an Art Deco landmark.

"With the current budget just passed by Congress a few weeks ago, our program was fully funded and that's going to permit us to grow and add more people," Federal Public Defender Cuauhtemoc Ortega said in an interview Thursday. "We have ads out for all positions - investigators, social workers, attorneys. We're aggressive right now."

Ortega has no "hard and fast number" for new hires. "We're going to decide that if we get a lot of qualified applicants. We're open to hiring a lot."

Ortega's 200-person L.A.-based staff, now located in two buildings that sit across East 2nd St. from each other in Little Tokyo, will be able to work together on three floors of the 10-story South Tower of the Times Building, with room for the new hires. The Federal Public Defender also has offices in Santa Ana and Riverside and is responsible for representing indigent defendants in seven counties from arrest up to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The government's lease on the current offices is expiring, which prompted the search for a new space. Ortega, Administrative Officer Jesse Wallis and a committee toured half a dozen buildings. "When we walked into this one, it felt like the top choice," Ortega said. "It's a beautiful space, a historic building. Inside the floor plans are really large. It's not built out; that's one thing that excited us about designing it from the ground up for our office's needs."

The U.S. General Services Administration handled the bidding process, facilitated the property search and manages the lease.

"We're very excited about where our offices are heading," Ortega said. "Hiring people is a relief after an almost three-year hiring freeze. Our office is in a good place right now and we're very excited about what is going to happen in the next year as we prepare for this move."

The Times Building, at 202 W. First St. was sold along with other structures in the square-block Times Mirror Square in 2016 for a reported $105 million to a Canadian development company, The Onni Group, and the newspaper moved out two years later.

Two of the buildings in the complex have been designated historic landmarks.

Ortega was reappointed Oct. 15, 2024, to his second term as head of the Central District of California defender's office with 230 employees, more than 100 of them attorneys.