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With 40 federal judges confirmed in the first year of his presidency – the most since Ronald Reagan was in his first year – President Joe Biden has announced two more nominations for the federal judiciary to close out the year.
The President’s nominee for the United States Court of Appeals or the Eleventh Circuit, Nancy Gbana Abudu, would be the first African-American woman judge ever to sit on the Eleventh Circuit, the second woman of color ever to sit on that court, and only the third African-American judge ever to sit on that court.
Abudu is the Deputy Legal Director and Director for Strategic Litigation at the Southern Poverty Law Center, where she has worked since 2019. Abudu was previously the Legal Director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida from 2013 to 2018 and Senior Staff Counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union Voting Rights Project from 2005 to 2013.
Biden has also nominated Judge J. Michelle Childs to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
Childs has served as a federal judge on the United States District Court for the District of South Carolina since 2010, when President Barack Obama nominated her. Judge Childs previously served as a state court trial judge on the South Carolina Circuit Court from 2006 to 2010.
Childs is Biden’s second nominee to the D.C. Circuit, which has served as a springboard to the Supreme Court in the past, including for current Justices John Roberts, Clarence Thomas and Brett Kavanaugh.
His first nominee, Ketanji Brown Jackson, was confirmed by the Senate earlier this year. Jackson, 51, is considered a potential Supreme Court nominee should 83-year-old liberal Justice Stephen Breyer retire.
Biden pledged to nominate a Black woman to the Supreme Court during his campaign should there be a vacancy.
This is President Biden’s twelfth round of nominees for federal judicial positions, bringing the number of announced federal judicial nominees to 75. 80% of the 40 confirmed judges are women, with 53% being people of color.
