Ali Al-Tamimi (also Ali Al-Timimi; born December 14, 1963) is an American computational biologist and Islamic teacher from Fairfax County, Virginia, who was convicted of soliciting treason and attempting to contribute services to the Taliban based on comments he is alleged to have made to a group of followers at a private dinner shortly after 9/11. He was subsequently sentenced to life in prison in 2005. Al-Timimi was held in solitary confinement for more than fifteen years including over a decade under special administrative measures at the maximum security United States Penitentiary ADX Florence, Colorado. In August 2020, the district court ordered his conditional release into home confinement pending appeal after concluding that his case raised substantial legal issues. His direct appeal was filed on August 1, 2025 in the Fourth Circuit after twenty years in the district court, and in January 2026 his conviction was overturned on First Amendment grounds.

Early life and education

Al-Timimi was born in 1963 and grew up in the Palisades neighborhood of Washington, DC, where he attended Georgetown Day School until age fifteen. His father (d. 2010), an attorney, was the cultural attaché at the embassy of the then Kingdom of Iraq. His mother, a mental health specialist with a doctorate in special education, initially taught at St. John's Child Development Center for intellectually disabled children. Later in the mid-1970s, she was a dean at Mt. Vernon College for Women.

Al-Timimi also became influenced by Islamist thinkers like Sayyid Qutb, Abd al-Rahman Abd al-Khaliq, Safar Al-Hawali and Muhammad Surur. Following his April 2005 conviction, an editorial about Al-Timimi's life appeared in the Saudi newspaper Al Madina. It described his "personality as one that combines eloquence, steadfastness in times of adversity, and unique opinions from one angle, with gentleness and a good community spirit from another angle. I was very impressed with this unique mix that made me see him as being similar to the martyr Sayyid Qutb."

At his parents' urging, Al-Timimi returned to the United States after a year of study and earned a second undergraduate degree in computer science from the University of Maryland. He later earned a Ph.D. in computational biology from George Mason University in 2004, after defending his doctoral thesis titled "Chaos and Complexity in Cancer."

Grant GM et al. (April 2004) “Microarrays in Cancer Research,” Anticancer Research, Mar-Apr;24(2A):441-8.

Al-Timimi, A., and Jamison, D.C (April 2004) “Knowledge Discovery in a Microarray Data Warehouse,” International Conference on Information Technology, IEEE, Las Vegas, NV.

Employment

As an IT specialist, Al-Timimi worked at an IT company named Xpedior, Inc. Clients he provided service to included America Online (AOL). He reportedly worked for two months for Andrew Card, while he was Secretary of Transportation under George H. W. Bush (1992–93).

As a scientific researcher, Al-Timimi worked for the United States Navy and at George Mason University where he held the rank of Assistant Professor. Viorst writes that Al-Timimi avoided contemporaneous political issues, but instead reflected on "the Islamic vision of Judgment Day, prophecy, the nature of the divine, and fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence)—subjects with which he grappled in Medina and in his private reading."

Al-Timimi has been characterized as "arguably the first American born activist Salafi preacher." But Al-Timimi became suspicious of al-Awlaki's motives, believing it to be an entrapment attempt and asked al-Awlaki to leave. In a Tweet on August 18, 2020, CBS national security correspondent, Catherine Herridge argued that the entire case was motivated by the Awlaki visit to Al-Timimi's home.

Trial and sentencing

Prior to Al-Timimi's prosecution, a group of young Muslim men that prosecutors described as a "Virginia Jihad Network" were convicted on charges related to their travels to a militant training camp in Pakistan called Lashkar-e-Taiba, a group that the United States would later designate as a Foreign Terrorist Organization on December 26, 2001. Al-Timimi was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in that case. and that "the time had come for them to go abroad and join the mujaheddin engaged in violent jihad in Afghanistan." Another attendee at the gathering, Randall Royer, advised the men that they could receive military training from Lashkar-e-Taiba, and put the men in contact with the group.

After the conclusion of the Virginia Jihad Network trials, prosecutors tried Al-Timimi for helping to inspire their travel to Lashkar-e-Taiba.

After a week of deliberation, the jury found Al-Timimi guilty of all 10 counts in April 2005.

Royer was released from prison in December 2016, and now works for a nonprofit group that seeks to undermine religious extremism. Since his release, Royer has maintained that "Timimi did not specifically say join the Taliban or help al-Qaeda though he seemed to imply it." However, Royer has also said that Al-Timimi's statement that Muslim men should "go be with the mujahideen" was "colossally bad advice."

Appeals

In late 2005, Al-Timimi's appellate attorneys sought discovery on whether Al-Timimi had been subjected to illegal wiretaps in light of the then-recently disclosed NSA warrantless surveillance program. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit responded by remanding the case back to the district court, giving broad latitude to the trial judge. The Justice Department did not confirm or deny the use of NSA wiretaps against Al-Timimi.

In 2006, Al-Timimi's attorneys also challenged his treatment by the Federal Bureau of Prisons, claiming that it had repeatedly moved him to new facilities to block him from meeting with his legal counsel. Attorney Jonathan Turley told NPR that Al-Timimi "was transferred to at least six different prisons in four states in less than six months. It became a version of Where's Waldo. We could not find him." After an internal investigation, BOP found that a prison official had "verbally harassed" Al-Timimi, but concluded that it had insufficient evidence to substantiate Al-Timimi's other claims.

Between 2016 and 2019, Al-Timimi's attorneys further argued that several of his convictions have been rendered invalid by the Supreme Court's intervening decisions in Johnson v. United States and United States v. Davis.

On April 27, 2020, Al-Timimi's attorneys filed a motion for his conditional release from prison pending the remainder of his appeal, arguing that intervening Supreme Court authority had cast doubt on the charges that continued to subject him to imprisonment, and that the COVID-19 pandemic additionally presented an exceptional reason justifying his release.

On August 18, 2020, Judge Brinkema granted the motion and ordered Al-Timimi's conditional release from ADX and into home confinement while he pursues his appeal. On September 1, 2020, Al-Timimi was released from ADX Florence and placed into home confinement.

On July 18, 2024, Judge Brinkema overturned three of the 10 counts on which he was convicted, including his life sentence. "But she upheld other counts that could leave him with decades of prison time beyond the 15 years he already served ... She also rejected allegations that prosecutors failed to disclose information that the government sought to use Anwar al-Awlaki ... as an informant, and that al-Awlaki tried unsuccessfully to lure Al-Timimi into illegal conduct as part of a government sting."

On August 1, 2025, Al-Timimi's direct appeal was filed in the Fourth Circuit after twenty years in the district court.

On January 9, 2026, the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously voted to overturn Al-Timimi's remaining convictions, finding that his statements were protected by the First Amendment. In the ruling, Circuit Judge James Andrew Wynn stated, "Ali al-Timimi was convicted based entirely on words he spoke in the immediate aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks -- words that were inflammatory, disturbing and deeply offensive, but that urged no concrete criminal plan and did not provide operational assistance for the commission of any particular offense".

Judgment of Acquittal

On March 3, 2026, Judge Brinkema "ORDERED and ADJUDGED that the defendant, Ali Al-Timimi, is fully acquitted, discharged, and any bond exonerated as to ALL COUNTS as charged in the Superseding Indictment (Dkt 47)."

The Al-Timimi case has generated some legal commentary, including:

Goldberger, D. (2005). "Protecting Speech We Hate". Litigation, 32(2), 40–44.

McCormack, W. (2005). "Inchoate Terrorism: Liberalism Clashes with Fundamentalism". Georgetown Journal of International Law, 37(1), 1–60.

References