Virginia Public Records: Which Office Holds Yours, and How to Ask

There is no single Virginia public records office. A court file comes from the clerk of the court that heard the case, with a 30-day outer limit. A driving record comes from the DMV under its own privacy statute. A crash report comes from the Department. And the Freedom of Information Act, with its five-working-day rule, reaches executive-branch bodies — not the judiciary. Sending the right request to the wrong office is the most common reason a request goes nowhere.

Which Virginia public records are held where

What you want	Who holds it	Governing law	Response time
A district court case file (traffic, misdemeanor)	Clerk of that general district court	§ 16.1-69.54:1	No longer than 30 days
A circuit court case file (felony, civil, appeal)	Clerk of that circuit court	§ 17.1-208	No longer than 30 days
Aggregated case data from the online systems	Office of the Executive Secretary	§§ 17.1-208, 16.1-69.54:1	No longer than 30 days
Your driving record	Virginia DMV	§ 46.2-208	DMV’s own process
A crash report	Virginia DMV / the investigating agency	§ 46.2-380	On written request, at the requester’s expense
A criminal history record	Virginia State Police, Central Criminal Records Exchange	§ 19.2-390	State Police process
Records of a city, county, agency or police department	That public body	§ 2.2-3704 (FOIA)	Five working days

Court records run on their own statute, not on FOIA

This is the mistake worth avoiding. Court files are not obtained by filing a Virginia Freedom of Information Act request, and citing FOIA to a clerk gets the request answered under the wrong rules or not at all.

Va. Code § 17.1-208 provides that records maintained by the clerks of the circuit courts are open to inspection in the clerk’s office by any person, and that the clerk furnishes copies on request subject to a reasonable fee under Va. Code § 17.1-275 — $0.50 for each page of a copy not otherwise specifically provided for. Va. Code § 16.1-69.54:1 does the same job for the district courts, which is where every traffic and misdemeanor case is heard.

Both sections work the same way:

• Individual case files go to the clerk of the court that heard the case. Aggregated data from the online systems goes instead to the Office of the Executive Secretary of the Supreme Court of Virginia.
• The clerk may require the request in writing, with the requester’s name and legal address.
• The request must identify the records with reasonable specificity.
• The clerk may require the estimated costs in advance, capped at the actual cost of accessing, duplicating, reviewing, supplying or searching for the records, with no overhead fees added.
• The response is due within a reasonable time and in no event longer than 30 days from a complete request. Any objection or claim of confidentiality is due in the same period.
• No clerk has to create a record that does not already exist, or produce data in a format the office does not normally use.

The judiciary publishes its own guidance on requesting public records, which is the authoritative statement of how the Office of the Executive Secretary and the clerks handle these requests. How to find the case before requesting the file is on the pages about Virginia circuit court case information and court cases in Virginia.

What FOIA actually covers

Va. Code § 2.2-3704 is the Virginia Freedom of Information Act’s procedure, and it applies to public bodies — a police department, a sheriff’s office, a city, a county, a state agency such as the DMV. Under it, public records are open to citizens of the Commonwealth and to Virginia news media during the custodian’s regular office hours, by inspection or by copies at the requester’s option.

The timetable is much shorter than the courts’:

1. The request must identify the records with reasonable specificity, and need not mention FOIA to invoke it.
2. The body must respond within five working days — by providing the records, withholding them entirely, providing them in part, saying they cannot be found or do not exist, or saying a response is not practically possible within five working days.
3. Where a response is not practically possible, the body gets an additional seven work days, or 60 work days where the request is for criminal investigative files.
4. Charges may not exceed the actual cost of accessing, duplicating, supplying or searching for the records, with no overhead fees.
5. No public body has to create a record that does not exist, and failure to respond is a denial and a violation of the chapter.

So: police report, city records, DMV policy documents — FOIA. A court file — the clerk, under the court sections above.

Your driving record is not a public record

A Virginia driving record is a DMV document, and Va. Code § 46.2-208 makes most of what is on it privileged. Personal information, driver information covering license status and driver activity, identification card information and vehicle information are released only in the circumstances the section lists.

Two of those circumstances matter to ordinary drivers. The subject of the record can get it, along with a complete explanation of it; the request need not be in writing or in person, provided the DMV is satisfied as to identity. And an insurance carrier or surety may obtain a transcript on written request — but no conviction or crash may be reported after 60 months from its date, unless it was used as a reason for a suspension or revocation, in which case the 60 months run from reinstatement. What is actually on the record, and for how long, is covered on the page about Virginia driving records.

Crash reports and criminal histories

A crash report is a third category again. Va. Code § 46.2-380 requires reports of a crash to be kept by the Department in hard copy or electronic form for at least 36 months from the date of the crash, and opens them to inspection by a limited list: anyone involved or injured in the crash or their attorney, anyone who owned a vehicle or property involved or their attorney, an insurance carrier reasonably anticipating civil liability or considering a policy, and certain federal agents. The Commissioner furnishes a copy on written request from someone entitled to see it, at the requester’s expense and for a reasonable fee.

A criminal history record is held by the Virginia State Police through the Central Criminal Records Exchange. Va. Code § 19.2-390 lists what must be reported to it, with fingerprints: treason, any felony, misdemeanors punishable under Title 54.1, jailable misdemeanors under Titles 18.2 and 19.2, and a short list of specific sections that includes eluding police and the commercial-driver offenses. The reckless driving sections are not on that list, and a driver released on a summons is not fingerprinted — which is why a reckless driving conviction, though genuinely a criminal conviction, does not normally appear on a Virginia State Police criminal history check. It does appear in the court’s own record and on the DMV driving record, and it is a misdemeanor conviction that has to be disclosed where a form asks about them.

Records that cannot be obtained at all

Some records are not public because they no longer exist in a public form. Under Va. Code § 19.2-392.2, a charge that ended in acquittal, nolle prosequi or dismissal can be expunged from the police and court records by order of the circuit court, and under Va. Code § 19.2-392.12 certain misdemeanor and lesser felony convictions can be sealed by petition. A search of an expunged or sealed matter returns nothing and says nothing about why. The route into either is on the page about expunging a record in Virginia.

Before sending a records request

A request that names the record precisely is answered quickly; a request that asks an office to go looking is the one that takes the full 30 days or comes back empty. Four things make the difference.

Name the case, not the person. A court clerk works from case numbers. Giving the case number, the court and the year turns a search into a retrieval. If the number is not to hand, the page on the Virginia case number search explains where it is printed and how to find it first.

Say which document. “The whole file” is a request for copying charges; “the sentencing order” or “the summons” is a request for one page. The statutes require reasonable specificity for exactly this reason.

Ask what it will cost before it is copied. Both court sections let the clerk determine the cost, tell the requester, and require agreement to a deposit before work begins. Asking for that estimate first avoids a bill nobody expected.

Check whether the record would exist. Neither a clerk nor a public body has to create one. A question such as how many cases of a certain type a court heard last year is a request to compile something new, and the answer may properly be no.

One thing the Commonwealth’s case data may not be used for

Both court-records sections carry the same restriction: reports of aggregated, non-confidential case data viewable through the online case information systems shall not be sold or posted on any other website or in any way redistributed to any third party, and the clerk or the Executive Secretary may refuse a request to enforce that.

That is why this site explains how to search the Commonwealth’s system and holds no case data of its own, and it is worth knowing as a reader too: the commercial “Virginia public records” sites charging for court data are working from copies that nobody is obliged to keep current. The free, official search is the one that is right. For anything that turns on what a record means for a specific person, a Virginia attorney can read the file and say what a summary screen cannot.