For five years, Charles Eaton served as a Deputy Federal Public Defender in the Central District of California, where he tried three federal jury trials as lead counsel and defended people against the full range of federal charges — from cartel and drug-trafficking conspiracies to white-collar fraud and immigration offenses.
He founded the Law Office of Charles Eaton to bring that same trial-tested defense to individuals and families directly. He serves on the Criminal Justice Act Panel for the Central District of California and previously clerked for the Honorable Jesus G. Bernal, United States District Judge.
Trained at the University of Chicago Law School and Yale Divinity School, he has also served as a pastor in Southern California since 2021. That work sits close to this one. Both begin the same way — sitting down with a person, listening to the whole of what has happened to them, and staying present through the hardest stretch of their life.
It is why he built the practice around a conviction he returns to often: a lawyer’s first job is to know their client. Everything else follows from that.
