Last updated on April 6, 2022
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Committee advances five nominees in late September vote
The Senate confirmed Sept. 23 another of President Joe Biden’s judicial nominees. Florence Pan will become the first Asian-American woman on the U.S. District Court in the nation’s capital after legislators approved her nomination, 68-30.
Pan, a former associate judge of the District of Columbia Superior Court, received her commission from Biden the same day. She replaced Kenji Brown Jackson, who was elevated to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in June.
Pan, a government lawyer for about 15 years, began her legal career as a law clerk to U.S. District Judge Michael Mukasey. She was an assistant U.S. attorney in Washington for ten years before President Barack Obama appointed her to the local court in the capital in 2009.
The University of Pennsylvania and Stanford Law School graduate is the 14th federal judge appointed by Biden since his inauguration in January.
On the same day, the Senate Judiciary Committee sent five other nominees, including one for the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, to the floor with a recommendation for approval.
The committee cleared Toby Heytens, Virginia’s solicitor general, by a 14-8 vote to a seat on the Richmond-based appeals court.
Senators on the panel approved Patricia Giles and Michael Nachmanoff, who have been chosen to sit on the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, and Sarala Nagala and Omar Williams, nominees to the U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut.
Voting 17-5 in favor, the committee recommended confirmation of Giles, an assistant U.S. attorney and former Cooley Godward LLP associate. Thirteen of 22 senators on the panel gave ‘yes’ votes to Nachmanoff, a federal magistrate.
Nagala, a senior lawyer in the U.S. Attorney’s office in Hartford, is a former law clerk to Judge Susan Graber of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and a former Munger, Tolles & Olson associate. Williams is a state court judge. He is a former assistant public defender.
The committee voted to recommend confirmation of Nagala and Williams, 13-9.
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