Orange County
Courthouse Directory

Orange County runs one of the most centralized court systems in California. Where Los Angeles County spreads criminal calendars across 36 courthouses, Orange County concentrates almost everything into five justice centers — and one of them, Harbor in Newport Beach, absorbs 13 cities on its own.

Assignments are not guesswork. The Superior Court publishes a Court Designation List that maps each city to the justice center where criminal and traffic matters are filed. Four of the five buildings — Central, Harbor, North and West — carry those city clusters. The fifth, Lamoreaux in Orange, is split by case type instead: juvenile, family law, domestic violence restraining orders and traffic.

Four further locations round out the system. The Civil Complex Center at 751 W. Santa Ana Blvd hears complex civil litigation only — no criminal or traffic docket at all. The Costa Mesa Justice Complex at 3390 Harbor Blvd is a real, separate location currently reported as a temporary home for small claims and probate while Central is renovated, so we do not claim a criminal jurisdiction it has not published. Department CJ1 is a courtroom inside the jail complex at 550 N. Flower St, where many in-custody arraignments run before a case transfers to a justice center. And Community Court at 909 N. Main Street is the county's collaborative court, working the mental health, addiction and homelessness issues behind a case.

There is one honest caveat the court itself prints: felony trials are assigned based on the availability of open trial courtrooms at any justice center. A felony filed at North in Fullerton can be tried in Santa Ana. The notice to appear is always the final word on where to be and when.

And none of this is where bail happens. Every Sheriff's Department booking in the county funnels into the Intake Release Center at 550 N. Flower Street in Santa Ana, where the cashier window takes a bond 24 hours a day — including every hour these courthouses are dark.