David Shayler says he acted in the public interest
His lawyers maintained at a recent hearing that he would be effectively be denied a fair trial and that his human rights would be infringed.
Mr Shayler is facing trial at the Old Bailey in November accused of breaching the Official Secrets Act by leaking documents to a Sunday newspaper three years ago.
In May this year, Mr Justice Moses decided it was not open to him to assert that disclosure of documents or information without lawful authority "was or may have been necessary in the public interest".
Mr Shayler's lawyers accused the judge, who is to preside at his trial, of taking "a step too far" in barring the public interest defence and suggested a breach of the Human Rights Act.
Mr Shayler, 35, who was born in Middlesbrough and now lives in London, has always maintained the disclosures and a series of later revelations were made to expose illegal activities and incompetence in the security services.
Extensive list
He claimed in the Mail on Sunday that agents in the 1970s tapped the telephone of Peter Mandelson, later to serve as Northern Ireland Secretary, and kept a file on Jack Straw, who is now foreign secretary.
His lawyers contended that "any disclosures made by him were intended to draw attention to the illegal, unlawful and inefficient workings of the security and intelligence services which, on occasion, risked and continued to risk life and limb".
But Mr Justice Moses pointed to an extensive list of people, including ministers of the Crown, police officers and independent staff councillors, to whom a member of the security services could raise concerns without resorting to the press.
Failing that, he could seek judicial review in the courts of any refusal of authorisation to raise complaints, the judge said.
Mr Shayler was hoping the appeal judges would rule that the judge had adopted an "unrealistic" approach in holding that adequate internal remedies were available, with the courts as a last resort.