Dust grains in plasma carry a substantial negative charge and are subject to strong repulsion. As a result, grains are typically assumed to be stable against growth by agglomeration. However, the instantaneous particle charge undergoes fluctuations whose magnitude and duration can be substantial. These fluctuations arise from the stochastic nature of particle-ion and particle-electron collisions and obey Gaussian statistics with parameters that are functions of the particle size and of the properties of the plasma species. Excursions of the charge from the mean value alters the particle behavior and results in interactions that could be stronger, or weaker than average. Here we calculate the rate of particle agglomeration taking into account the statistical distribution of the particle charge. We find that effect of fluctuations is to always increase the rate of agglomeration. Because of this enhancement the agglomeration rate of small particles is significantly higher than what would be obtained in the absence of fluctuations and can be comparable to the agglomeration rate for uncharged particles of the same size. The agglomeration rate of larger particles is enhanced significantly, but the overall collision rate remains too low. Under these conditions, growth by agglomeration is fueled by small particles and is predicted to result in narrow size distributions. ©1998 American Institute of Physics.