Prominent Washington lawyer Thomas Goldstein will be sentenced on Friday for tax and financial crimes tied to his side career as a high-stakes poker player, capping a startling chapter for a top appellate attorney who spent years arguing key cases before the U.S. Supreme Court.
U.S. District Judge Lydia Griggsby will determine the sentence at a hearing scheduled for 9:30 a.m. EST (1330 GMT) in the Washington suburb of Greenbelt, Maryland, where Goldstein stood trial for six weeks this year in a case that exposed his double life as a star litigator who traveled the globe for multimillion-dollar poker games.
Goldstein was charged in January 2025 in the final days of Democratic President Joe Biden’s administration with concealing earnings and losses from poker games in the U.S. and abroad with stakes reaching millions of dollars. He pleaded not guilty.
A jury convicted Goldstein in February for failing to report millions of dollars in poker winnings, lying on mortgage loan documents and making improper payments through his former law firm Goldstein & Russell.
Prosecutors had asked Griggsby to sentence Goldstein to more than eight years in prison and require him to pay $3.1 million in restitution for unpaid taxes. Sentencing recommendations are not binding on federal judges, who can go beyond them, or lower, in punishing a defendant.
Goldstein’s defense lawyers have urged Griggsby to sentence him to what they called a lengthy supervision period that would hold him accountable while also allowing him to “repay his debts, address his gambling addiction, and contribute to society.”
The trial featured testimony from Goldstein, law firm leaders and actor Tobey Maguire, who starred in 2002’s “Spider-Man” and other films. Maguire told jurors he hired Goldstein in 2020 to try to recover more than $7 million that a Texas businessman allegedly owed the actor in a poker debt.
Goldstein had argued more than 40 cases at the Supreme Court before retiring in 2023 and was a founder of the SCOTUSblog legal news website. His clients included Alphabet’s Google and “Fortnite” video game maker Epic Games.
A Democrat, Goldstein was part of the team that represented Al Gore in the Supreme Court fight over George W. Bush’s victory in the 2000 presidential election.
Goldstein earlier added former U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar of law firm Cooley to his defense team, signaling his preparation for an appeal of his conviction and sentencing.
