A defense attorney vs prosecutor salary comparison can't be settled from the titles: federal wage data has no series for either role, only lawyers (SOC 23-1011).
What the May 2025 medians show is a split by employer — $178,380 in the federal executive branch, $157,870 in private practice's legal services sector, $131,350 in local government and $115,330 in state government — while loan forgiveness follows the employer, not the side.
Private defense attorney pay
Federal wage data publishes no defense-attorney series.
The closest private-practice benchmark in the BLS's OEWS May 2025 release is the legal services sector — law firms (NAICS 5411) — where lawyers (SOC 23-1011) earned a median annual wage of $157,870.
That figure blends every practice a firm runs into one median, so it describes the market private lawyers sit in rather than criminal defense pay.
Two limits matter for the defense bar.
OEWS excludes self-employed workers, so a solo criminal defense lawyer's or a firm owner's income never appears in the data at all.
And the occupation's published spread is wide: nationally, lawyers' wages ran from a $78,360 10th percentile to a $351,600 90th percentile in the same release, so a blended median describes the middle of a long distribution, not a criminal defense pay scale.
Appointed work does carry one published rate: under the Criminal Justice Act, the maximum panel attorney hourly rate in federal non-capital cases is $177 for work performed on or after January 1, 2026 — up from $175 in 2025 and $172 in 2024.
That is a ceiling on appointed hours, not a salary, and capital-case rates are set separately.
For the role's own wage table — national and state medians for the lawyer series — see our criminal defense salary page.
Sector medians, not role salaries
Public defender pay
Public defenders work on the government side of this comparison: BLS lists public defender among the job titles attorneys hold in federal, state and local government.
One wrinkle on the federal side — federal defender organizations come in two types: federal public defender organizations, whose staff are federal employees, and community defender organizations, which are grant-funded nonprofits.
On wages, BLS keeps no public-defender row — the lawyer occupation (SOC 23-1011) is as granular as the federal data gets.
The May 2025 government sector medians are $131,350 for local government and $115,330 for state government, each excluding schools and hospitals.
Read those as the market those payrolls occupy: the same sector medians count prosecutors, city and county attorneys and the rest of the government lawyer payroll, so neither number is a defender pay scale.
For the role's published numbers, see our public defender salary page.
The mechanics behind the paycheck — salaried offices, contract defenders and court appointments — are on our how public defenders are paid guide.
Prosecutor pay
Prosecutors sit in the same data.
BLS lists prosecutor among the job titles attorneys hold in federal, state and local government, so prosecutor offices sit on government payrolls: the two government medians above — $131,350 local, $115,330 state — describe the market those payrolls sit in, mixed with public defenders, city attorneys and the rest of the government lawyer payroll.
BLS publishes no prosecutor-only median.
The federal tier is where this comparison's ladder tops out, and the closest published figure to federal prosecutor pay is the lawyers series again: lawyers in the federal executive branch earned a median annual wage of $178,380 in May 2025 — the highest sector figure here.
That number spans the whole executive branch, though, so it is federal-sector context rather than a prosecution pay scale.
Role-level numbers are on our prosecutor salary page.
Loan repayment perks: PSLF and the John R. Justice program
The perk gap follows the employer, not the job.
Public Service Loan Forgiveness forgives the remaining Direct Loan balance after the equivalent of 120 qualifying monthly payments made while working full time — a weekly average of at least 30 hours — for a qualifying employer, and eligibility turns on who employs you: U.S. government organizations at any level and 501(c)(3) nonprofits qualify; private law firms do not.
That reshapes the salary comparison.
A defender or prosecutor employed by a government office, or a defender at a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, banks qualifying payments in the same years they bank their salary, while a defense associate at a private firm earns none of it, whatever the firm pays.
What the trade actually weighs, on the medians above, is this: private practice's $157,870 sits above local government's $131,350 and state government's $115,330 but below the federal executive branch's $178,380 — and the executive branch, as a U.S. government employer, qualifies for PSLF too.
The forgiveness clock only starts for qualifying employers, and a private firm never starts one.
Prosecutors and public defenders also have a program aimed at them specifically: the John R.
Justice program, a federal student loan repayment program for prosecutors and public defenders administered by the Bureau of Justice Assistance.
Our John R. Justice repayment guide covers how it works, including the award terms our research could not verify.
For which legal jobs count toward PSLF and what changed recently, see our PSLF guide.
Which pays more over time?
Stack the May 2025 medians side by side — one survey, one occupation, so the ranking is like-for-like: federal executive branch $178,380, legal services (private practice) $157,870, local government $131,350, state government $115,330.
On those numbers, the median private-practice lawyer out-earns the median state and local government lawyer, and the federal executive branch sits at the top of the four.
Two caveats keep this from being a verdict.
First, the sector cuts never isolate criminal defense or prosecution, so no published head-to-head gap exists between the two titles.
Second, OEWS excludes the self-employed and firm owners, so the private defense side's upside — a practice you own, equity in a firm — never enters the median at all.
Over a career, the honest summary is a trade.
A defender or prosecutor whose employer qualifies — a government office or a 501(c)(3) nonprofit — adds the PSLF clock of 120 qualifying monthly payments; the private side's upside sits outside what the wage data measures.
Nothing in the published numbers says one side of criminal law out-earns the other, and current openings on both sides are on our criminal defense attorney jobs page.
Career information, not legal advice. Salary figures are BLS OEWS May 2025 medians for lawyers (SOC 23-1011) by sector; loan-forgiveness terms come from StudentAid.gov and change with federal policy — confirm current rules with Federal Student Aid and the employer you are considering.