Warren County Court, Lake George

Warren County Court Information

Court details are provided as a public reference and were verified against the New York State Unified Court System at the time of publication. Judges, hours, and contact information can change; confirm current details with the court before relying on them.

What Warren County Court Handles

The Unified Court System lists the court as Warren County Supreme and County Court. Supreme Court, with Hon. Martin D. Auffredou and Hon. Amy N. Quinn in chambers here, hears civil matters; County Court hears criminal ones, with exclusive authority to try felonies, shared authority over misdemeanors, and appeals from the local courts. Hon. Robert A. Smith is the County Court judge, elected to a term running from 2021 through 2030, and he also serves as the county’s Surrogate and presides over the felony drug treatment part. Family Court and Surrogate’s Court sit in the same building.

The county’s felony docket reflects its geography: felony DWI and vehicular assault from the Northway and the Route 9 corridor, drug felonies from Glens Falls and Queensbury, burglary of seasonal homes and camps in the northern towns, grand larceny, felony assault from the Lake George Village bar scene in summer, and felony-level domestic violence.

The Centralized Arraignment Part

Warren County was one of the first counties in the district to centralize felony arraignments. Since July 2019, a defendant arrested on a felony and held in custody is brought to the county’s Centralized Arraignment Part on the Municipal Center campus, where the town and city justices sit on a rotation, instead of waiting for the justice of the town where the arrest happened. The county’s own operations review describes it as more convenient for judges, attorneys, and police than the old town-by-town system, and it means the public defender or retained counsel can be present at every arraignment. At that appearance the judge sets release conditions, and in a domestic case an order of protection; the case then returns to the local court for the place of the offense, or, once indicted, moves to County Court. Session times are not published, so the timing of a particular arraignment is confirmed with the Sheriff’s Office or the court.

If you are held, CPL 180.80 requires release when the grand jury has not acted within the statutory deadline. An indictment moves the case to County Court for a second arraignment, then discovery, motions, and a plea or trial. A felony reduced to a misdemeanor before indictment stays in the local court, which makes the weeks right after arrest the most important stretch of the case; the sequence is on our page on what happens after an arrest.

The Felony Drug Treatment Part and the Glens Falls Specialty Parts

The County Court Felony Drug Treatment Part, Judge Smith presiding, sits in the Municipal Center; the resource coordinator is at (518) 480-6340. It is the county’s felony-level treatment court, in which an eligible defendant whose charge is driven by addiction completes supervised treatment under a plea agreement that ends in a reduced or dismissed charge, and in a sentence on failure. Glens Falls City Court runs the misdemeanor counterparts: a misdemeanor drug treatment court and a misdemeanor domestic violence part, both at 42 Ridge Street.

Warren County does not have an integrated domestic violence court, a veterans treatment court, or a mental health court; those cases are handled in the ordinary parts, and the family court side of a domestic case runs separately before Family Court Judges Ted M. Wilson and Eric C. Schwenker in the same building.

The District Attorney, the Jail, and the Building

Cases are prosecuted by the Warren County District Attorney’s Office, in the Municipal Center at 1340 State Route 9, (518) 761-6405. District Attorney Jason M. Carusone has served since 2017 and was re-elected unopposed in November 2025; in July 2026 the New York Prosecutors Training Institute named him its Executive Leadership Prosecutor of the Year. The office publishes a discovery portal and runs a traffic ticket reduction program for non-criminal traffic matters. Defendants held before trial are at the Warren County Correctional Facility next door at 1400 State Route 9, (518) 743-2500, a 186-bed facility opened in 2004 and run by the Sheriff’s Office under Sheriff James A. LaFarr Jr.

The Municipal Center has ample parking, a ramped street-level entrance, and no public elevators; it is a single-floor building. Every person and package goes through magnetometer and x-ray screening, weapons and knives are prohibited, and no audio or video recording is allowed, including with a phone. No shorts, cut-offs, halters, or tank tops, and no food or drink in the courtrooms. A public law library is on the first floor. The Commissioner of Jurors, Wanda Smith, is at (518) 480-6330.

The Local Courts That Feed Warren County Court

Warren County is eleven towns, the Village of Lake George, and the City of Glens Falls, with twelve local criminal courts: Glens Falls City Court and the town courts of Queensbury (Monday mornings and afternoons at 81 Glenwood Avenue), Lake George (Thursday mornings at 20 Old Post Road; the village has no court of its own), Warrensburg (Wednesday mornings on Main Street), Bolton, Chester, Hague, Horicon, Johnsburg, Lake Luzerne, Stony Creek, and Thurman. See the Warren County page, the full courts directory, or our felony defense page, or call 518-245-9109 for a free consultation.