Former Anglo Irish Bank chief executive David Drumm has stepped up his fight against extradition to Ireland by filing another legal challenge in a US court claiming unlawful detention.

The Dubliner petitioned the Massachusetts District Court for a writ of habeas corpus on Christmas Eve, filing the action against the US government and the US attorney general Loretta Lynch.

Sheriff Joseph McDonald of Plymouth County near Boston where Mr Drumm is being held, and John Gibbons, the US Marshal for the District of Massachusetts, are also named as defendants.

The 49-year-old Dubliner has been in custody since his arrest by US Marshals on October 10th at his home outside Boston on an extradition request from the State. He was denied a release on bail.

Mr Drumm is wanted in Ireland to face 33 criminal charges relating to transactions while he ran Anglo during the deteriorating financial crisis in 2007 and 2008.

The former banker is spending Christmas in Plymouth County Correctional Facility, 60 kilometres south of the courthouse where Mr Drumm’s extradition case is taking place.

He is being held in the maximum-security prison pending his extradition hearing, scheduled for early March 2016, after being denied bail by US Magistrate Judge Donald Cabell on December 10th.

The judge refused to release Mr Drumm pending his extradition hearing saying that the seriousness of the charges against him provided him with “an incentive to flee”.

Mr Drumm's latest action was filed on Thursday by a Los Angeles-based lawyer Michael Miguel who works for the law firm Kasowitz, Benson, Torres & Friedman.

Two of the firm's New York-based partners Edward McNally and Daniel Fetterman have been representing Mr Drumm in his extradition proceedings.

Mr McNally pleaded with the judge at Mr Drumm’s bail hearing in November to release him, claiming it would be unjust to subject him to an “unrelentingly harsh” prison experience in a case on which an Irish judge gave two convicted Anglo Irish executives not one day in jail.

Mr Drumm had argued that the conditions of his confinement were “uncomfortable” and made it more difficult than necessary for him to consult with his lawyers.

The judge said that “the fact that jail is unpleasant” did not constitute a special circumstance permitting his release on bail.