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On Wednesday, President Joe Biden announced 10 new judicial nominees, including 9 for the federal bench.
This is President Biden’s ninth round of nominees for federal judicial positions, bringing the number of announced federal judicial nominees to 62.
Biden has put forward more judicial candidates during his 287 days in office than any other president in modern American history, including former President Donald Trump.
To date, 28 of the president’s judicial nominations have been confirmed, more than any other president this far in his first term dating back to President Ronald Reagan.
The current slate of nominees consists of nine women and one man, and continues in the vein of Biden’s previous picks to be diverse in terms of both personal and professional backgrounds.
Judge Leonard Stark, nominated to the Federal Circuit, already has a decade of experience as a federal district court judge in Delaware. He brings extensive legal experience to the role, and importantly creates an opportunity to bring diversity to Delaware’s district court, which currently consists entirely of white judges, only one of whom is a woman.
The district court nominees in this slate will likewise bring important diversity to the courts. Among them is Judge Ruth Bermudez Montenegro, President Biden’s second Latina nominee to the Southern District of California. California’s population is nearly 40% Latinx, but there is currently only one active Latina federal district court judge out of 61 seats.
The nominees also include Evelyn Padin, who would be the second Latina to serve on New Jersey’s district court, Judge Cristina Silva, who would be the second Latina to serve in Nevada’s district court (and the third ever Hispanic judge on that court), and Judge Trina Thompson, who would be the only Black woman to serve on the Northern District of California. Thompson is Biden’s second such nominee in California, which currently has no active Black women out of 61 seats.
The other Black woman, along with Thompson, whom Biden selected for a judgeship on Wednesday, is Kendra Briggs. Tapped for an opening on the Superior Court for the District of Columbia, Briggs has been an assistant U.S. attorney for the district since 2010.
In a statement Wednesday, the nonprofit advocacy group Alliance for Justice highlighted the importance of keeping up this pace on the heels of statewide elections where Democrats suffered a critical loss of power in Virginia.
“This slate advances his important commitment to bringing more professional and demographic diversity to our courts, including two more former public defenders and several women of color,” Alliance for Justice President Rakim H.D. Brooks said in a statement. “As Tuesday’s elections demonstrated, time may be limited to ensure the Senate can continue confirming these nominees. It is imperative that this impressive pace continues.”
