Calling him “profoundly dangerous,” a Maryland U.S. District judge sentenced a founder of a neo-Nazi group to the maximum 20 years in federal prison and a lifetime of supervised release for his role in a plot to blow up Baltimore’s energy grid.

U.S. District Judge James K. Bredar rejected arguments from the defense that Brandon Clint Russell, 30, of Florida, was less culpable than a local accomplice who was prepared to carry out the attack on Baltimore Gas and Electric substations.

Bredar said Russell was “the brains of the operation” and no mere “keyboard warrior” in a basement in another state.

“Make no mistake — the evidence in the record shows he absolutely, positively wanted these outcomes and was content and willing to work through the hands of others to accomplish these objectives,” Bredar said.

Given the chance to speak before the sentence was handed down, Russell shook his head no.

Russell gained international notoriety in 2017 when he was outed as the founder of the Atomwaffen Division, a highly influential neo-Nazi terrorist organization with international ties. Prosecutors said the group sought to overthrow the government and replace it with one in the image of the Third Reich.

Its presence was mostly online and unknown to law enforcement until 2017, when two members were fatally shot during an argument in a Tampa, Florida, apartment shared by youthful extremists.

A search turned up extremist literature, guns and a homemade explosive, along with journals in which Russell outlined plans for attacking transformers along South Florida’s “Alligator Alley.”

Russell was sentenced to five years in prison in that case, during which time he came into contact with Sarah Beth Clendaniel, a Catonsville woman who shared his beliefs.

Under the misguided belief that she had only months to live, Clendaniel said she wanted to attack critical infrastructure in the Baltimore region as one final act to be remembered for, according to court records. She and Russell were arrested in February 2023.

“Swift and thorough coordination from our law enforcement partners through the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force disrupted this significant threat to Maryland,” William J. DelBagno, the special agent in charge of Baltimore’s FBI field office, said in a statement Thursday.

Clendaniel pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 18 years in prison and placed on lifetime supervision.

Ian J. Goldstein, Russell’s Florida-based attorney, noted that, at her sentencing, prosecutors said Clendaniel was more culpable, and he said his client’s ideas were “all talk” that would go nowhere but for someone like Clendaniel willing to carry them out. He said Russell shouldn’t get more time behind bars than Clendaniel.

In a sentencing memorandum, prosecutors said Russell did far more and was a “clear and present threat to all who reside in the United States.” Russell groomed people to carry out attacks, attempted to procure weapons, coordinated calls and messages, and provided “crucial insight” into the workings of electrical transformers, prosecutors said.

“As his conduct before and after the conviction demonstrates, there is nothing that will stop him,” prosecutors wrote.

Prosecutors said Russell and Clendaniel have remained in contact while incarcerated, including as recently as July 1 in calls arranged by third parties but which were recorded by the jails. They sought to set up a P.O. box to allow them to communicate, and they talked about contributing to a white prison newsletter.

Prosecutors attached a copy of a “White Prison Newsletter” that celebrated the 100th anniversary of “Mein Kampf” and included a reading list and white supremacist crossword puzzle. It teased an in-development book written by Russell titled “The Sword Has Been Drawn.”

Bredar said Russell had untreated mental health issues. In a letter to the court, Russell’s mother lamented that he had a strained relationship with his father and that “over the years he has been searching for something to fill the void in his life.” Russell had completed training with the National Guard and attended the University of South Florida, originally hoping to become a physicist, just before his first arrest, his mother said. After being released, he started a welding program at a trade school. “But we ended up here,” she wrote.

A friend, Ryan Hatfield, wrote in a letter to the court that Russell was a “scientifically-minded person,” “equally able to discuss physics or philosophy,” with a love of animals who “became a vegetarian out of a moral conviction that eating other living creatures should be avoided at all costs.”

“Brandon’s type of politics may differ from your own, or from those of most people, but he is at heart an idealist, and idealism has always been seen as a great virtue,” the friend wrote.

Bredar, at the sentencing hearing, said Russell’s ideal view of America was a “bizarre Utopia populated by people who only look and think like” he does, and that his beliefs and goals were “an attack on the diversity of our community.”

In ordering the lifetime supervision, Bredar said: “He needs to be watched.”