(CNN) -- Chris Brown's assault trial in Washington has been delayed until the appeal of his bodyguard's conviction is completed.
The singer now faces another grueling cross-country trip on "Con Air," the federal prisoner transport system, that could last a week or more from Washington to Los Angeles.
The U.S. Marshals Service promised a Los Angeles judge it would return Brown, 24, to California, where he had been jailed earlier awaiting a probation revocation hearing.
Brown's attorney, Mark Geragos, will ask the California judge to allow his client to be released to travel on his own back to the Los Angeles jail, where he was locked up after getting booted from a court-ordered rehab program last month. Another attorney representing Brown will be in court Wednesday afternoon in Los Angeles to argue that point, Geragos said.
Otherwise, the singer will make the trip in chains in the custody of U.S. marshals. The federal inmate transport system is a combination of airplane hops between cities and bus trips with prisoners chained and guarded.
"I think it's a little over the top to have him in custody on this misdemeanor when everybody saw the bodyguard's trial and which was nothing more than a bloody nose," Geragos said. "And you have got the body guard who was convicted and who readily admitted he was the one who did the punching. So all of this is much ado about nothing."
The delay in Brown's Washington trial came after prosecutors refused to grant immunity to bodyguard Christopher Hollosy so he could testify without jeopardizing his own case. On Monday, Hollosy was found guilty of assaulting a man on a Washington sidewalk before Brown's trial was to begin in the case.
The prosecutors cited Hollosy's refusal to talk to them about his testimony as a major reason for the decision not to grant immunity. Their motion also said they suspected he might lie in his testimony to help Brown.
"The cynic in me would say apparently it is not a search for the truth because if they wanted the truth they would give Hollosy immunity and allow him to testify," Geragos said Wednesday outside court.
CNN's Paul Courson and Sunny Hostin contributed to this report.
