Josh Duggar will be spending an additional two months behind bars, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons. The disgraced reality star had time added to his sentence last week, and is now scheduled to be released from FCI Seagoville in Texas on Feb. 2, 2033.
This marks the third time Josh’s prison sentence has been extended. His initial release date had been set for August 2032 after he was convicted of possessing child sexual abuse material in 2021 and ordered to serve 151 months in federal prison. His cousin Amy Duggar King said on social media that her cousin was “again in solitary confinement” for a “rules violation” that resulted in the additional time being added to his sentence.
Josh’s attorney, Beau Brindley, tells PEOPLE “there is no way … to know the basis of a deviation of this limited magnitude,” adding that it could “be the result of program availability, which is wholly out of the inmate’s control.”
:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc():focal(472x677:474x679):format(webp)/josh-duggar-marriage-mugshot-121824-41bd1482131f44f7b138045cc0de9be9.jpg)
This extension of Josh’s sentence comes at the same time that his fourth, and final, appeal of his 2021 conviction is working its way through the courts. A federal court denied his legal team’s request for an acquittal in May 2022, the U.S. Court of Appeals denied his appeal and upheld his conviction in August 2023 and the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear his appeal in June 2024.
He is now appealing his case in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Arkansas, and presented eight arguments as to why he believes he should be granted a new trial or have his conviction vacated in a filing obtained by PEOPLE.
Those arguments include his previous attorneys’ failure to question an individual who had access to the computer where the illegal images were discovered, a Department of Justice expert who Duggar accuses of lying under oath during the trial and another DOJ expert whom Duggar alleges presented “prejudicial information.”
Duggar also argues that the release of a police report filed after he allegedly molested four of his sisters made the trial unfair.
The first hearing in that case focused less on those arguments and more on the question of whether Josh had actual standing before the court, with federal prosecutors arguing that the required court documents were not filed on time in the case.
Josh was required to mail his appeal by June 24, 2025 from FCI Seagoville, and told the court he did put the letter in the outgoing mail on that exact date, but a prison mail log submitted by prosecutors and obtained by PEOPLE does not show a letter from Josh being sent on that day. The judge in that case is now set to issue a ruling on whether or not the court will even hear arguments in the case.
View this post on Instagram
Josh, a father of seven who became a household name as a teenager while appearing on the TLC reality show 19 Kids and Counting, was convicted of receiving and possessing material depicting minors under the age of 12 engaging in sexually explicit conduct in 2021.
During that trial, prosecutors presented evidence that Josh had “repeatedly downloaded and viewed images and videos depicting the sexual abuse of children, including images of prepubescent children and depictions of sadistic abuse,” according to the Department of Justice. Once he is released, Josh will have to register as a sex offender and be on probation for 20 years.
