Anthony Williams v. Warden Fort Dix FCI

── Anthony Williams v. Warden Fort Dix FCI ── Court: Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit Date: May 14, 2026 Category: General NOT PRECEDENTIAL UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE THIRD CIRCUIT ___________ No. 25-1416 ___________ ANTHONY WILLIAMS, Appellant v. WARDEN FORT DIX FCI ____________________________________ On Appeal from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania (D.C. Civil Action No. 2:23-cv-00789) District Judge: Honorable Wendy Beetlestone ____________________________________ Submitted Pursuant to Third Circuit LAR 34.1(a) May 7, 2026 Before: MATEY, MONTGOMERY-REEVES, and NYGAARD, Circuit Judges (Opinion filed: May 14, 2026) _________ OPINION * _________ PER CURIAM Anthony Williams appeals from the District Court’s order denying his petition * This disposition is not an opinion of the full Court and pursuant to I.O.P. 5.7 does not constitute binding precedent. for a writ of habeas corpus under 28 U.S.C. § 2241. We will affirm. Williams was the organizer of a broad conspiracy to acquire and misuse the personal identification and banking information of dozens of victims. In December 2012, following a jury trial in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, Williams was convicted of conspiracy, access device fraud, identity theft, and bank fraud. In April 2013, the District Court sentenced him to an aggregate term of 259 months’ imprisonment. 1 At that time, he was serving a ten-year New Jersey sentence. The District Court’s sentencing order did not state whether the federal sentence was concurrent with or consecutive to the state sentence. Williams was discharged from New Jersey custody in September 2017 and began to serve his federal sentence. In August 2020, Williams asked the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) to treat his federal sentence as concurrent to the state term. He asserted that, under Section 5G1.3(b) of the United States Sentencing Guidelines, the sentencing court was required to run his state and federal sentences concurrently, and that the BOP could consider this error when calculating his sentence. 2 The BOP denied him relief at the prison, regional, and national levels. 1 We affirmed. United States v. Williams, 591 F. App’x 78, 81 (3d Cir. 2014) (not precedential). Williams subsequently filed a motion to vacate under 28 U.S.C. § 2255, but the District Court denied relief, E.D. Pa. Crim. No. 11-cv-00223 (order entered Jan. 30, 2019), and we denied Williams a certificate of appealability, C.A. No. 19-2364 (order entered Dec. 3, 2019). 2 Section 5G1.3(b) requires the sentencing court to impose a concurrent sentence when an undischarged prison term is based on “relevant conduct” in the federal case. 2  After these efforts failed, Williams filed a § 2241 petition in the District Court challenging the BOP’s decisions. 3 The District Court denied the petition, and Williams appealed. 4 On appeal, Williams continues to argue that, at sentencing, the District Court erred by not applying U.S.S.G. § 5G1.3(b), and that the BOP should take that error into account when calculating his sentence. As the District Court correctly concluded, however, Williams’s Guidelines challenge is not cognizable under § 2241. Section 2241 permits a challenge only to the BOP’s execution of Williams’s sentence; it does not permit a