Trump Nominates Three Judges

SAN FRANCISCO (CN) — President Trump has nominated Seattle attorney Eric D. Miller, with Perkins Coie, for a seat on the Ninth Circuit, and two attorneys to the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington.

If confirmed, Miller, 43, will fill the seat vacated by Ninth Circuit Judge Richard Tallman, who assumed senior status on March 3.

Miller, who graduated from Harvard in 1996 and got his J.D. from the University of Chicago in 1999, clerked for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and District of Columbia Appeals Court Judge Laurence Silverman. He was an assistant to the U.S. solicitor general from 2007 to 2012 and argued 16 times before the U.S. Supreme Court. He was a deputy general counsel for the FCC from 2006 to 2007, managing litigation in defense of the commission.

The Ninth Circuit, which received 11,096 new case filings in 2017, has six vacancies and one impending vacancy among its 29 authorized judgeships.

Also on Friday the president nominated Assistant U.S. Attorney Tessa M. Gorman to fill the vacancy on the Seattle Federal Court created when U.S. District Judge Robert S. Lasnik assumed senior status in January 2016; and Seattle attorney Kathleen M. O’Sullivan to fill the vacancy created when U.S. District Judge Marsha J. Pechman assumed senior status in February 2016.

Gorman, 47, has worked as an assistant U.S. attorney in the Western District of Washington since in 2001 and became chief of its Criminal Division in 2013. She was an honors trial attorney for the Department of Justice’s Criminal Division from 1998 to 2001, in the Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs Section.

She received her bachelor’s degree from Yale and her J.D. from the University of California, Berkeley.

O’Sullivan, 48, has been a partner in Perkins Coie’s Seattle office since 2004, where she leads the litigation practice. She joined Perkins Coie as an associate in 1997. She earned her bachelor’s degree from Yale in 1991 and her J.D. from Georgetown University in 1996.

The U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington had 3,768 new case filings in fiscal year 2017. It has three vacancies among its seven authorized judgeships.

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