An equal partisan presence on the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee did not prevent the panel from recommending confirmation of several judicial nominees this week.
The committee approved seven of President Joseph R. Biden, Jr.’s candidates for the federal bench on Thursday despite the ongoing absence of California Democrat Dianne Feinstein.
Among those whose nominations moved on the floor of the chamber for likely confirmation votes were the leader of the nation’s largest pro bono legal services firm and the general counsel of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.
Senators green-lighted Mónica Ramírez Almadani, the chief executive officer of Public Counsel, for the U.S. District Court in Los Angeles and Michael E. Farbiarz, the port authority lawyer, for the federal trial court in New Jersey.
“I appreciate the bipartisan support earned by each of today’s nominees, and we will continue to call and vote on these nominations in Senator Feinstein’s absence,” said committee chairman Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill.
Almadani is a former senior advisor to Vice President Kamala Harris, having worked with Harris in the California attorney general’s office. She also worked for several years as a lawyer at the U.S. Department of Justice.
Farbiarz is a former co-chief of the terrorism and anti-narcotics unit in the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan. He was also a law clerk to former U.S. district judge Michael B. Mukasey before Mukasey served as attorney general in the administration of President George W. Bush.
Jeffrey I. Cummings and LaShonda A. Hunt, nominees to serve on the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, were also approved, as were Wesley L. Hsu for the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, Robert Kirsch for the federal district court in New Jersey, Orelia E. Merchant for the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York.
Cummings is a federal magistrate and former counsel to President Barack Obama during Obama’s service as a state legislator and U.S. senator, while Hunt is a federal bankruptcy judge in Chicago.
Hsu, a California Superior Court judge, is a former assistant U.S. attorney and Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher associate. Kirsch is a state court judge and former longtime Department of Justice attorney. Merchant is the chief deputy New York attorney general and a former Department of Justice and Environmental Protection Agency lawyer.
The committee held the nominations of six other potential judges, including that of Michael A. Delaney to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. Delaney, a former New Hampshire attorney general, has faced questions about his stance on abortion rights from some Democratic senators.
Earlier in the week the Judiciary Committee considered the nominations of three other aspiring federal district judges: Jeremy C. Daniel for the U.S. District Court in Chicago, Brendan A. Hurson for the federal trial court in Maryland, and Darrel J. Papillion for the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana.
Committee votes on those nominations are not yet scheduled.
There are currently 38 pending judicial nominations in the Senate. Twenty-five of them await floor votes, eight candidates have had hearings before the Judiciary Committee, and five are awaiting committee hearings.
The Senate has confirmed 119 Article III judges during the Biden administration.
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