WASHINGTON (CN) — Five of President Biden's picks for federal judgeships advanced to the next step in the confirmation process Thursday as August recess draws near for Congress.
The Senate Judiciary Committee gave the go-ahead to two circuit nominees and three district court nominees. They now face a vote in the Senate for full confirmation.
While Biden's first year in office was marked by speedy judicial confirmations and a historic number of judges ascending to the federal bench, the Senate's pace of getting judicial picks past the finish line is slowing down in the anticipation of Congress' four-week break in August as well aa the crunch toward November midterms.
Biden's nominee for the Seventh Circuit, Judge John Z. Lee, who has presided at the Northern District of Illinois for a full decade, passed through the committee by a vote of 12-8.
Lee’s nomination positions him to become the first Asian American judge on the Chicago-based Seventh Circuit.
Before ascending to the federal bench, Lee worked in private practice as an associate with Grippo Elden and, later, as a partner with Freeborn & Peters.
At the start of his career, Lee spent two years as a trial attorney in the Environmental and Natural Resources Division of the Department of Justice.
Judge Salvador Mendoza Jr., slated to be a judge for the Ninth Circuit, garnered support from 11 of the committee's members and opposition from nine.
Mendoza, who joined the Eastern District of Washington in 2014, would be the first Hispanic judge from Washington on the Ninth Circuit. He began his career with the attorney general’s office in Washington, later moving on to work as a deputy prosecuting attorney in Franklin County. Mendoza spent 14 years as a solo practitioner before becoming a superior court judge in Washington and ascending to the federal bench.
Judge Stephen Henley Locher, the only nominee who received a unanimous voice vote of support, is nominated to the Southern District of Iowa.
Locher is currently a magistrate judge in Iowa, a position he has served in since 2021.
Locher has legal experience in both private practice and prosecution, having spent four years as an associate at Goldberg Kohn and then another five years as an assistant U.S. attorney in Iowa. Locher was also a partner at Belin McCormick for eight years before becoming a judge.
Nancy Maldonado, a nominee for the Northern District of Illinois, moved forward by a vote of 13-9.
Maldonado is a partner at Miner, Barnhill & Galland in Chicago and has spent the past 19 years in private practice, specializing in employment, fraud and civil rights cases. She began her law career clerking for Judge Rubén Castillo, a now-retired judge from the Northern District of Illinois, the very court Maldonado is set to join.
If confirmed, Maldonado would become the first Hispanic woman to ever serve as a federal judge in Illinois.
Gregory Brian Williams, Biden's nominee to be a judge for the District of Delaware, advanced by a vote of 11-9.
Williams is a partner at Fox Rothschild, a firm he joined back in 1995, and works as a special master for the District of Delaware in complex civil cases. Before his time in private practice, Williams spent six years in the U.S. Army Reserve.
He is slated to become the second Black judge to serve on the District of Delaware and the only judge of color actively serving.
Later in the day, the Senate voted 51-46 to confirm Robert Steven Huie to a Southern District of California judgeship.
An attorney at international law firm Jones Day since 2020, Huie previously worked as an assistant U.S. attorney and spent several years as a legal adviser for the Department of Justice’s Office of Overseas Prosecutorial Development.
He began his legal career working in civil law for Wiggin and Dana and Latham & Watkins.
Now that he’s confirmed, Huie will fill a seat on the court that has been vacant since Judge Michael Anello took senior status in 2018.
“Rob Huie is an exceptional choice,” Dana Sabraw, chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California, said in a statement. “He’s an exceptionally kind, gracious and warm person. He has both sterling credentials and a well-rounded criminal and civil practice background, as a former federal prosecutor and white-collar defense attorney at Jones Day. He is well known in our district and highly respected. My colleagues and I are so pleased he will be joining our bench.”
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