The Honorable Carlos F. Acosta is a Maryland Circuit Court judge sitting in Montgomery County, MD. He was elevated to this position from the Maryland District Court in January 2022. Prior to his judicial appointments, he served as Inspector General for the Prince George's County Police Department. In that role Judge Acosta functioned as the independent authority over the Internal Affairs Division, as well as being responsible to investigate systemic or programmatic issues affecting the police department's missions. Previously, he served in various prosecutorial posts, including as the Deputy State's Attorney for Prince George's County and as a Trial Attorney for the United States Department of Justice Criminal Division's Gang Squad. As a federal prosecutor, he also served as the US Department of Justice Program Manager for the Overseas Prosecutorial Development, Assistance, and Training Program for the Mérida Initiative (Mexico), and as a Special Assistant United States Assistant Attorney in the Organized Crime and Narcotics Trafficking Section (US Attorney's Office - District of Columbia).

As the Deputy State's Attorney for Prince George's County, Maryland, Judge Acosta was directly responsible for the Homicide, Violent Crime, Gun, Felony Trial, Economic Crime and Grand Jury / Screening Units, in addition to his administrative functions and trial work. Previously, he was a Trial Attorney for the United States Department of Justice Criminal Division's Gang Squad. He has also served as a Special Assistant United States Attorney for the District of Columbia in the Organized Crime and Narcotics Trafficking Section. He began his prosecutorial career as a member of the Montgomery County and later the Prince George's County, Maryland Office of the State's Attorney. Judge Acosta, currently an adjunct Associate Professor of Law, has been at the American University Washington College of Law since 1997. In that capacity, he teaches in the Trial Advocacy Program instructing courses in prosecutorial ethics, as well as prosecuting complex homicides. He is also a faculty member for the AU-WCL / CEJA / UAH Diplomado en Litigación Oral Penal (Diploma in Criminal Oral Litigation) Program. Judge Acosta has served on the faculty of the National Advocacy Center (Columbia, SC). He has been a lecturer both domestically and internationally for various Department of Justice agencies, as well as for the Financial Action Task Force-Le Groupe d'Action Financière (FATF-GAFI) and the United Nations Development Programme. He traveled to Panama as part of an American Bar Association - Rule of Law Initiative to assist in a business process review of that country's effort to transform its criminal justice system. He was an invited speaker at the Universidad Nacional de La Plata (Argentina) where he gave a presentation entitled "Using Science and Technology to Combat Crime". Judge Acosta has traveled to Kosovo several times to train senior prosecutors on cross-examination and ethics as well as on conducting Death Investigations. He was asked by the Justice Education Society of British Columbia to assist in a seminar entitled "Alternatives to Incarceration in Central America" which was presented in Guatemala December 2014. He has also been a speaker on panel discussions for the American Bar Association on ethical issues for public lawyers, as well as legal issues for Inspectors General. Judge Acosta also lectures internationally in diverse areas from international wildlife smuggling to gang prosecution to trial advocacy. Most recently, he was invited to Piura, Peru (2019) to make several presentations to judges, prosecutors and police on the investigation and prosecution of corruption and money laundering cases. He has assisted the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in the development of "Officers of the Court Training Primers".

Judge Acosta received both a Bachelor of Arts in English and a Master of Arts in English (Rhetoric) from the University of Maryland. In 1991, he received his Juris Doctor from the Southern Methodist University School of Law in Dallas, Texas. He is licensed in the State of Maryland and the District of Columbia