$60 Billion in Federal Payments: A Public Analysis of the Treasury Judgment Fund

We analyzed 113,969 payments from the U.S. Treasury Judgment Fund — the account used to pay settlements, court judgments, and arbitration awards against the federal government. Payment-level analyses of this dataset are rare — this study makes the full aggregation public.

Reviewed by Leonard Goldberg, Editor · Last updated October 9, 2026

114K payments

Federal Payments Analyzed

2008–2025

$59.9B

Total Dollars Paid

By the federal government

$525K

Average Payment

Median: just $5,000

$1.9B

Largest Single Payment

CMS breach of contract

Key Findings

The Treasury Judgment Fund is a permanent, indefinite appropriation established by Congress in 1956 (31 U.S.C. § 1304). When someone wins a lawsuit against the federal government, this fund pays out — no Congressional approval needed for individual payments.

Here are the most significant findings:

The average payment is $525,149, but the median is just $5,000 — a staggering 105:1 ratio. A tiny number of massive payments dramatically skew the average.
In calendar year 2020, federal payments spiked to $14.2 billion — nearly 10x the prior year ($1.5B in 2019). A single category, breach of contract, accounted for 89% of the spike.
CMS and the Department of Energy are the top payers — each responsible for over $13 billion. Just 319 CMS cases averaged $42.8 million per payment.
Federal medical malpractice accounts for 10,170 cases and $3.2 billion — the VA is by far the largest federal healthcare provider and the largest source of federal med mal claims.
Traffic accidents are the most common claim type (37,668 cases) but generate relatively low payouts ($31K average). Contract disputes are the least common but highest value.

Cited in Congress: the CLEAR Act

On September 24, 2026, Rep. Harriet Hageman (R-WY) cited this analysis when she introduced the Clearer Liability Expenditure and Access to Reporting (CLEAR) Act. According to the release, the bill would require the Treasury Department to post monthly totals of Judgment Fund payments, including how many were settlements, break that spending into payments, attorney fees, court costs and interest, and let the public search payments by agency, plaintiff and counsel.

The release quotes three annual totals from this page: $2.4 billion, $2.7 billion and $2.9 billion for 2023, 2024 and 2025. Those are calendar-year totals by payment date, and the 2025 figure covers January through September only. By federal fiscal year (October through September), the Judgment Fund paid $2.02 billion in FY2023, $1.86 billion in FY2024 and $4.36 billion in FY2025.

What the published data already shows on the bill's points: 71,284 of 113,969 payments (62.5%) name the plaintiff's counsel, 996 of them only as “[REDACTED FOR PRIVACY]”. Plaintiff names are not part of the published dataset. Every payment already carries a payment date, principal, attorney fees, costs and interest, which is how the fiscal-year totals below are computed.

Total Payments by Calendar Year (2008–2025)

Annual federal payments fluctuate significantly. The 2020 spike ($14.2B) dwarfs every other year — driven almost entirely by breach of contract settlements. Bars group payments by the calendar year of the payment date: 2008 covers October–December only and 2025 covers January–September only, because the Treasury data spans federal fiscal years 2009–2025. Fiscal-year totals are in the table below.

Source: U.S. Treasury, Bureau of the Fiscal Service. Years shown as last two digits.

Payments by Federal Fiscal Year (FY2009–FY2025)

The federal fiscal year runs from October 1 to September 30 (FY2025 = October 2024 through September 2025). Use these totals when comparing with federal budget figures. FY2025 had the most payments of any fiscal year in the data (9,317), and its total of $4.36 billion was the highest since FY2021.

Fiscal year	Payments	Total paid	Attorney fees
FY2025	9,317	$4.4B	$43.6M
FY2024	6,548	$1.9B	$25.7M
FY2023	6,571	$2.0B	$32.7M
FY2022	8,120	$2.8B	$59.7M
FY2021	5,847	$8.3B	$37.2M
FY2020	6,274	$8.4B	$55.8M
FY2019	5,972	$1.8B	$22.4M
FY2018	6,275	$1.7B	$17.4M
FY2017	6,130	$3.8B	$23.4M
FY2016	6,636	$4.4B	$6.5M
FY2015	8,614	$3.1B	$23.8M
FY2014	8,356	$2.8B	$10.3M
FY2013	5,866	$5.8B	$17.4M
FY2012	6,095	$3.0B	$13.8M
FY2011	5,647	$2.3B	$75.7M
FY2010	5,709	$1.1B	$26.9M
FY2009	5,992	$2.3B	$13.8M

Source: U.S. Treasury, Bureau of the Fiscal Service — Judgment Fund Report to Congress, FY2009–FY2025. Payments with a confirmed amount above $0. Attorney fees as reported in the separate fee field.

FY2026 (preliminary): $6.27 billion

Treasury's bi-weekly Judgment Fund payment reports for October 1, 2025 through September 30, 2026 add up to $6.27 billion across 7,960 payment lines — the highest fiscal-year total since FY2021. The annual Report to Congress that this study is built on has not been published for FY2026 yet. For FY2025, the same bi-weekly reports summed to $4.30 billion against $4.36 billion in the annual report (-1.3%), so the final FY2026 figure may come in slightly higher.

$3.04 billion (48.5%) was paid for the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management to seven offshore wind companies, all under the citation “breach of express contract”: Attentive Energy, LLC; Bluepoint Wind LLC; Canopy Offshore Wind, LLC; Community Offshore Wind, LLC; Invenergy Renewables LLC; RWE Offshore Wind Holdings LLC; TotalEnergies Carolina Long Bay, LLC. Roll Call reported that the Interior Department has reimbursed $3.9 billion in total to six offshore wind developers for giving up their leases, paid through the Judgment Fund.

Payments under the Camp Lejeune Justice Act came to $559.2M in 1,958 payment lines (see our Camp Lejeune settlement calculator). During the October–November 2025 government shutdown, payments nearly stopped: the reports for October 1 through November 15, 2025 list $306K in total.

Source: U.S. Treasury, Bureau of the Fiscal Service — Judgment Fund Bi-weekly Payment Reports, 24 files covering FY2026. Preliminary figures; lines with an amount above $0, principal plus attorney fees, costs and interest.

The $14.2 Billion Year: What Happened in 2020?

In 2020, federal payments surged from $1.5 billion to $14.2 billion — a 9.7x increase over the prior year. This wasn't a broad increase across all categories. The spike was driven almost entirely by one category:

2020 Spike Driver

$12.6B

Breach of Express Contract payments — 89.1% of all 2020 payments

The remaining $1.6 billion across all other categories was consistent with prior years. Contract disputes, 5th Amendment takings, and Superfund cleanups rounded out the rest.

While we cannot identify specific cases from the public data, the scale suggests one or more major government contract disputes resolved during this period, likely related to defense or healthcare procurement.

Which Federal Agencies Pay the Most?

The top 15 agencies by total payments. Click a column header to sort. CMS and the Department of Energy each exceed $13 billion in total payouts.

Agency	Cases	Total Paid▼	Average
Centers for Medicare & Medicaid ServicesCMS	319	$13.6B	$42.8M
Department of EnergyDOE	713	$13.3B	$18.6M
Department of the InteriorDOI	360	$6.0B	$16.7M
Department of Veterans AffairsVA	13,194	$3.3B	$254K
Department of the Air ForceAir Force	3,579	$2.2B	$623K
Department of AgricultureUSDA	787	$1.9B	$2.4M
Indian Health ServiceIHS	1,235	$1.6B	$1.3M
Department of StateState	555	$1.6B	$2.9M
Department of the ArmyArmy	10,417	$1.6B	$155K
Department of the NavyNavy	8,245	$1.4B	$171K
US Army Corps of EngineersUSACE	897	$909.3M	$1.0M
Surface Transportation BoardSTB	538	$685.8M	$1.3M
Federal Bureau of InvestigationFBI	4,802	$604.0M	$126K
General Services AdministrationGSA	506	$488.4M	$965K
Dept. of Housing & Urban DevelopmentHUD	424	$402.5M	$949K

Agency names standardized from Treasury data. Navy and Army figures include separate sub-entries combined.

Top 10 Agencies by Total Payments

CMS and the Department of Energy dominate by dollar value, each exceeding $13 billion. The VA leads in case count due to its role as the largest federal healthcare provider. Most other agencies fall well below $5 billion in total payouts.

Federal Medical Malpractice: $3.2 Billion in Payments

Under the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA), patients injured by federal healthcare providers can file malpractice claims against the government. This primarily affects patients at VA hospitals, military medical facilities, and Indian Health Service clinics.

10,170

Federal Med Mal Cases

$3.2B

Total Paid

$319K

Average Payment

Cases resolved through full trial judgments average $2.5 million — roughly 17x higher than administrative settlements ($145K). This reflects both the severity threshold required to proceed to trial and the leverage differential in settlement negotiations.

The Department of Veterans Affairs, as the largest federal healthcare provider, is responsible for the most FTCA medical malpractice cases by volume — 13,194 total claims with $3.3 billion in payments.

What Types of Claims Does the Government Pay?

Federal payments fall into several distinct categories, each with very different payment profiles:

Payment Type	Cases	Total Paid	Average
Breach of Contract	1,465	$29.6B	$20.2M
Contract Disputes Act	1,336	$6.4B	$4.8M
Cobell Litigation (Native American)	18	$3.4B	$189.4M
Indian Tribal Claims	1,486	$2.9B	$2.0M
CERCLA/Superfund	1,915	$3.1B	$1.6M
Federal Tort — Medical Malpractice	10,170	$3.2B	$319K
Federal Tort — Traffic Accidents	37,668	$1.2B	$31K
5th Amendment Takings	617	$814.2M	$1.3M
Equal Credit Opportunity Act	386	$866.9M	$2.2M

Breach of contract dominates by dollar value (49.5% of all payments) despite being a small fraction of cases. Meanwhile, traffic accidents under FTCA are the most common claim type (37,668 cases) but represent just 2% of total dollars paid.

Cite this research

This analysis is released as an open, citable dataset. Researchers and journalists are welcome to use it with attribution.

DOI

Permanent identifier

10.5281/zenodo.19495955

APA

Goldberg, L. (2026). U.S. Treasury Judgment Fund — Aggregated Payments Dataset (2008–2025) [Data set]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19495955

BibTeX

@dataset{goldberg_2026_treasury,
  author    = {Goldberg, Leonard},
  title     = {{U.S. Treasury Judgment Fund --
               Aggregated Payments Dataset (2008--2025)}},
  year      = 2026,
  publisher = {Zenodo},
  doi       = {10.5281/zenodo.19495955},
  url       = {https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19495955}
}

Download the data

Aggregated CSV files — CC BY 4.0. Free to use with attribution.

Data Source & Methodology

This analysis uses payment data from the U.S. Treasury, Bureau of the Fiscal Service. The Judgment Fund is a permanent, indefinite appropriation established by Congress in 1956 under 31 U.S.C. § 1304. It pays court judgments and Justice Department compromise settlements of actual or imminent lawsuits against the federal government.

What the data includes

Payment amount (confirmed payment sent)
Defendant agency
Citation type (legal basis for payment)
Payment date
Whether payment was a settlement, judgment, or administrative claim

Important caveats

The Judgment Fund does not cover all federal payments — agencies with their own appropriations (e.g., the VA for some tort claims) may pay from their own budgets.
Individual claimant names and case details are not included in the public transparency data.
Our analysis covers payments sent from October 2008 through September 2025, i.e. federal fiscal years 2009–2025. Charts and findings group payments by calendar year of the payment date unless they are marked FY (federal fiscal year, October–September). Earlier records are available but in a different format and were excluded for consistency.
A payment does not indicate wrongdoing — many payments reflect cost-effective settlements rather than admissions of liability.

The Judgment Fund transparency data is available from the Bureau of the Fiscal Service.

More Settlement Research

See our analysis of 530K medical malpractice payments, or estimate your own settlement using our free calculators.

Malpractice Study Try the Calculator

$60 Billion in Federal Payments: A Public Analysis of the Treasury Judgment Fund

Reviewed by Leonard Goldberg, Editor · Last updated October 9, 2026

114K payments

Federal Payments Analyzed

2008–2025

$59.9B

Total Dollars Paid

By the federal government

$525K

Average Payment

Median: just $5,000

$1.9B

Largest Single Payment

CMS breach of contract

Key Findings

Here are the most significant findings:

The average payment is $525,149, but the median is just $5,000 — a staggering 105:1 ratio. A tiny number of massive payments dramatically skew the average.
In calendar year 2020, federal payments spiked to $14.2 billion — nearly 10x the prior year ($1.5B in 2019). A single category, breach of contract, accounted for 89% of the spike.
CMS and the Department of Energy are the top payers — each responsible for over $13 billion. Just 319 CMS cases averaged $42.8 million per payment.
Federal medical malpractice accounts for 10,170 cases and $3.2 billion — the VA is by far the largest federal healthcare provider and the largest source of federal med mal claims.
Traffic accidents are the most common claim type (37,668 cases) but generate relatively low payouts ($31K average). Contract disputes are the least common but highest value.

Cited in Congress: the CLEAR Act

Total Payments by Calendar Year (2008–2025)

Source: U.S. Treasury, Bureau of the Fiscal Service. Years shown as last two digits.

Payments by Federal Fiscal Year (FY2009–FY2025)

Fiscal year	Payments	Total paid	Attorney fees
FY2025	9,317	$4.4B	$43.6M
FY2024	6,548	$1.9B	$25.7M
FY2023	6,571	$2.0B	$32.7M
FY2022	8,120	$2.8B	$59.7M
FY2021	5,847	$8.3B	$37.2M
FY2020	6,274	$8.4B	$55.8M
FY2019	5,972	$1.8B	$22.4M
FY2018	6,275	$1.7B	$17.4M
FY2017	6,130	$3.8B	$23.4M
FY2016	6,636	$4.4B	$6.5M
FY2015	8,614	$3.1B	$23.8M
FY2014	8,356	$2.8B	$10.3M
FY2013	5,866	$5.8B	$17.4M
FY2012	6,095	$3.0B	$13.8M
FY2011	5,647	$2.3B	$75.7M
FY2010	5,709	$1.1B	$26.9M
FY2009	5,992	$2.3B	$13.8M

FY2026 (preliminary): $6.27 billion

The $14.2 Billion Year: What Happened in 2020?

2020 Spike Driver

$12.6B

Breach of Express Contract payments — 89.1% of all 2020 payments

The remaining $1.6 billion across all other categories was consistent with prior years. Contract disputes, 5th Amendment takings, and Superfund cleanups rounded out the rest.

Which Federal Agencies Pay the Most?

The top 15 agencies by total payments. Click a column header to sort. CMS and the Department of Energy each exceed $13 billion in total payouts.

Agency	Cases	Total Paid▼	Average
Centers for Medicare & Medicaid ServicesCMS	319	$13.6B	$42.8M
Department of EnergyDOE	713	$13.3B	$18.6M
Department of the InteriorDOI	360	$6.0B	$16.7M
Department of Veterans AffairsVA	13,194	$3.3B	$254K
Department of the Air ForceAir Force	3,579	$2.2B	$623K
Department of AgricultureUSDA	787	$1.9B	$2.4M
Indian Health ServiceIHS	1,235	$1.6B	$1.3M
Department of StateState	555	$1.6B	$2.9M
Department of the ArmyArmy	10,417	$1.6B	$155K
Department of the NavyNavy	8,245	$1.4B	$171K
US Army Corps of EngineersUSACE	897	$909.3M	$1.0M
Surface Transportation BoardSTB	538	$685.8M	$1.3M
Federal Bureau of InvestigationFBI	4,802	$604.0M	$126K
General Services AdministrationGSA	506	$488.4M	$965K
Dept. of Housing & Urban DevelopmentHUD	424	$402.5M	$949K

Agency names standardized from Treasury data. Navy and Army figures include separate sub-entries combined.

Top 10 Agencies by Total Payments

Federal Medical Malpractice: $3.2 Billion in Payments

10,170

Federal Med Mal Cases

$3.2B

Total Paid

$319K

Average Payment

What Types of Claims Does the Government Pay?

Federal payments fall into several distinct categories, each with very different payment profiles:

Payment Type	Cases	Total Paid	Average
Breach of Contract	1,465	$29.6B	$20.2M
Contract Disputes Act	1,336	$6.4B	$4.8M
Cobell Litigation (Native American)	18	$3.4B	$189.4M
Indian Tribal Claims	1,486	$2.9B	$2.0M
CERCLA/Superfund	1,915	$3.1B	$1.6M
Federal Tort — Medical Malpractice	10,170	$3.2B	$319K
Federal Tort — Traffic Accidents	37,668	$1.2B	$31K
5th Amendment Takings	617	$814.2M	$1.3M
Equal Credit Opportunity Act	386	$866.9M	$2.2M

Cite this research

This analysis is released as an open, citable dataset. Researchers and journalists are welcome to use it with attribution.

DOI

Permanent identifier

10.5281/zenodo.19495955

APA

Goldberg, L. (2026). U.S. Treasury Judgment Fund — Aggregated Payments Dataset (2008–2025) [Data set]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19495955

BibTeX

@dataset{goldberg_2026_treasury,
  author    = {Goldberg, Leonard},
  title     = {{U.S. Treasury Judgment Fund --
               Aggregated Payments Dataset (2008--2025)}},
  year      = 2026,
  publisher = {Zenodo},
  doi       = {10.5281/zenodo.19495955},
  url       = {https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19495955}
}

Download the data

Aggregated CSV files — CC BY 4.0. Free to use with attribution.

Data Source & Methodology

What the data includes

Payment amount (confirmed payment sent)
Defendant agency
Citation type (legal basis for payment)
Payment date
Whether payment was a settlement, judgment, or administrative claim

Important caveats

The Judgment Fund does not cover all federal payments — agencies with their own appropriations (e.g., the VA for some tort claims) may pay from their own budgets.
Individual claimant names and case details are not included in the public transparency data.
Our analysis covers payments sent from October 2008 through September 2025, i.e. federal fiscal years 2009–2025. Charts and findings group payments by calendar year of the payment date unless they are marked FY (federal fiscal year, October–September). Earlier records are available but in a different format and were excluded for consistency.
A payment does not indicate wrongdoing — many payments reflect cost-effective settlements rather than admissions of liability.

The Judgment Fund transparency data is available from the Bureau of the Fiscal Service.

More Settlement Research

See our analysis of 530K medical malpractice payments, or estimate your own settlement using our free calculators.

Malpractice Study Try the Calculator

$60 Billion in Federal Payments: A Public Analysis of the Treasury Judgment Fund

Key Findings

Cited in Congress: the CLEAR Act

Total Payments by Calendar Year (2008–2025)

Payments by Federal Fiscal Year (FY2009–FY2025)

FY2026 (preliminary): $6.27 billion

The $14.2 Billion Year: What Happened in 2020?

Which Federal Agencies Pay the Most?

Top 10 Agencies by Total Payments

Federal Medical Malpractice: $3.2 Billion in Payments

What Types of Claims Does the Government Pay?

Cite this research

APA

BibTeX

Download the data

Data Source & Methodology

What the data includes

Important caveats

More Settlement Research

Settlements you can still claim