A military judge in Maryland has accepted the terms under which alleged WikiLeaks leaker Bradley Manning has proposed to plead guilty.

The terms would allow Manning to plead guilty to 7 of the 22 charges he's currently facing for allegedly leaking hundreds of thousands of classified government documents to the secret-spilling site in 2009 and 2010.

The 7 offenses together carry a total maximum prison term of 16 years in prison, presiding officer Col. Denise Lind said during a pretrial hearing at Fort Meade on Thursday, according to the Associated Press.

Manning hasn't formally submitted a plea yet; he was simply seeking approval from the court that the terms under which he contemplated entering a plea were acceptable.

Earlier this month Manning's attorney, David Coombs, explained the move by saying that his client was willing to accept responsibility for some of the lesser included offenses against him, but not the charges as they stand in whole.

The move is known as “pleading by exceptions and substitutions."

Defense attorney Coombs wrote on his blog that Manning “is not pleading guilty to the specifications as charged” by prosecutors, but rather “is attempting to accept responsibility for offenses that are encapsulated within, or are a subset of, the charged offenses.”

The plea would not dispose of the remaining charges, but it would let Manning's attorney focus his defense on fewer points of contention at trial next year.

Manning's attorney may be hoping that the government will drop the more serious charges once Manning pleads guilty to the lesser ones.

Government officials have not said whether they would continue prosecuting him for the other 15 counts he would face, including an aiding the enemy charge, which carries a maximum sentence of life in prison.

Under the plea proposal, Manning would admit to giving WikiLeaks a battlefield video file, which WikiLeaks published under the title "Collateral Murder," as well as some classified memos, more than 20 Iraq and Afghanistan war logs, and other classified materials, according to AP. He would also plead guilty to wrongfully storing classified information.

The hearing on Thursday was held to hear arguments on motions that Manning's attorney have filed to have all of the charges dismissed, on grounds that he was treated unconstitutionally during nine months of his confinement at a Marine Corps brig in Quantico, Virginia.

Manning's trial is currently scheduled for February. He has told the court that he has elected to have a trial by military judge, instead of a trial by jury.