The Proud Boys seditious conspiracy case is officially over — but the judge who closed it made sure the record would not read like a vindication.

In a seven-page memorandum issued Friday, US District Judge Timothy Kelly granted the Justice Department’s motion to dismiss the prosecutions of the far-right group’s leaders. He also made unmistakably clear that he was doing so under duress, and that the government’s request had nothing to do with facts, evidence, or legal reasoning.

Kelly was nominated to the bench by Donald Trump during his first term.

Who Was Convicted, and of What

The men at the center of the case were not convicted on thin evidence. A jury found them guilty after a lengthy trial.

Ethan Nordean, Joseph Biggs and Zachary Rehl were each convicted of multiple offenses, seditious conspiracy among them — one of the most serious charges the federal government can bring, essentially an allegation of conspiring to overthrow or oppose the authority of the United States by force.

A fourth defendant, Dominic Pezzola, was convicted of assaulting an officer and of smashing a Capitol window. Kelly noted in his memo that Pezzola’s actions helped create the first breach point through which hundreds of rioters poured into the building.

That moment was captured on video and circulated widely, becoming one of the defining images of January 6, 2021.

Nordean, Biggs and Rehl received lengthy prison sentences in 2023.

From Clemency to Dismissal

When Trump returned to office in 2025, he issued a sweeping clemency order covering roughly 1,500 people charged or convicted in connection with the Capitol attack. The Proud Boys leaders had their sentences commuted — they walked free.

But their convictions remained on the books. A commutation shortens or ends a punishment; it does not erase the underlying finding of guilt.

That changed in stages. In April, the Justice Department asked an appeals court to overturn the convictions outright. The appeals court granted the request in May and sent the matter back down to Kelly for final disposition.

Which left the judge with a narrow set of options — and, as he explained, effectively none at all.

“It Is Hard to See How Any Other Course Could Make Practical Sense”

Kelly’s reasoning was blunt about the box he was in.

Denying the motion, he wrote, would accomplish nothing. It would not resurrect convictions that the Court of Appeals had already vacated. The practical result would be identical either way.

So he granted the dismissal. But he refused to pretend it was a normal exercise of prosecutorial discretion.

A Judge Names the Reason Out Loud

What distinguishes Kelly’s memo from a routine procedural order is his willingness to state, on the record, why the government wanted these cases gone.

There is little mystery about the motion’s purpose, Kelly wrote. The president’s views on the prosecution of January 6 defendants — whether grounded in fact or in fiction, as the judge put it — are widely known, as is his intent to extend clemency to them.

That is an extraordinary sentence for a federal judge to write about the administration that appointed him. Kelly is saying, in effect: this dismissal is political, everyone knows it is political, and I am not going to dress it up as anything else.

He also pointed out a detail that undercuts any suggestion of partisan overreach in the original prosecution: the case was initiated in the days immediately following the attack — while Trump was still in office.

What Kelly Said About January 6 Itself

The most striking portion of the memorandum was not about the defendants at all. It was Kelly’s own assessment of what happened at the Capitol, restated for the record as the case closed.

He described the attack as a perilous event, and enumerated what it targeted:

• People, including police officers, many of whom were injured
• Congress — a coordinate branch of government the Founders placed first in Article I of the Constitution
• The constitutional mechanism for the peaceful transfer of power

On that final point, Kelly reached for a phrase from Ronald Reagan, who once called the peaceful handoff of presidential power “nothing less than a miracle.”

A Closing Appeal

Kelly ended not with legal analysis but with something closer to a plea.

If the American experiment in self-government is to survive another 250 years, he wrote, citizens will have to act together — regardless of partisan preference — to preserve, protect and defend that miracle through the constitutional framework.

Coming from a Trump appointee, in an order granting a Trump administration request, the passage lands with unusual weight. Kelly complied with the law as he understood it. He simply declined to be silent about what compliance meant.

What This Actually Changes

For Nordean, Biggs, Rehl and Pezzola, the legal consequences of January 6 are now essentially erased. Sentences commuted. Convictions vacated. Prosecutions dismissed.

For the broader historical record, the picture is murkier. A jury heard the evidence and convicted. An appeals court vacated at the executive branch’s request. A district judge signed the dismissal while explicitly stating that facts and law had nothing to do with it.

The paperwork says the cases are closed. The judge’s memo says something else entirely — and that document, unlike the convictions, cannot be vacated.