The man who tried to assassinate US President Ronald Reagan in 1981 has been released from a Washington mental hospital for good.

A spokeswoman for the District of Columbia’s Department of Mental Health said on Saturday that all patients scheduled to leave St Elizabeth’s Hospital had been discharged.

John Hinckley Jr was among those scheduled for discharge.

An Associated Press reporter saw a car pull into the driveway of the Hinckley home about 2.30pm.

Officers from the Kingsmill Police Department chased reporters away.

A federal judge ruled in late July that the 61-year-old Hinckley is not a danger to himself or the public and can live full-time at his mother’s home in Williamsburg.

Hinckley had already been visiting Williamsburg for long stretches at a time and preparing for the full-time transition.

He’ll have to follow a lot of rules while in Williamsburg, but his longtime lawyer Barry Levine says he thinks Hinckley will be a “citizen about whom we can all be proud”.

Hinckley will have to work or volunteer at least three days a week.

He hasn’t yet done paid work in Williamsburg, but he has volunteered at a church and a mental health hospital, where he has worked in the library and in food service.

Hinckley will continue to go to therapy while in Williamsburg. For at least the first six months he’ll see his psychiatrist twice a month and he’ll have to attend weekly group therapy sessions.

He’ll also see a therapist individually. He’ll return to Washington once a month to St Elizabeth’s Hospital’s outpatient department to discuss his mental health and compliance with the conditions of his leave.

However, don’t expect to see Hinckley giving any interviews. He’s barred from talking to the press.

As a 25-year-old college dropout, Hinckley had grown fixated upon Jodie Foster and Martin Scorsese’s film Taxi Driver, in which she played a teenage prostitute.

Inspired by the film’s main character, who plots to kill a presidential candidate, Hinckley opened fire on Mr Reagan outside a Washington DC hotel on March 30, 1981, in a misguided effort to win Foster’s affections.

Mr Reagan suffered a punctured lung but recovered quickly.

His press secretary, James Brady, was left permanently disabled and eventually died of his injuries in 2014.

With AAP