President Joseph R. Biden, Jr. has named a longtime assistant federal public defender posted in Kansas to a seat on the U.S. appeals court based in Denver.
Richard E.N. Federico’s nomination was announced July 27.
The Topeka-based lawyer has worked for the nation’s public defender system since 2015 and is now a senior litigator. Before joining the office of the Federal Public Defender for the District of Kansas he was an assistant federal public defender in Oregon.
Federico is also a veteran military lawyer and judge. He became a U.S. Navy Judge Advocate General Corps officer in 2002 and, during 15 years of active duty, was both a prosecutor and defense counsel. In 2019, as a Navy reservist, he became a military judge and handles cases as a trial judge.
A graduate of the University of Kansas School of Law and Indiana University, Federico also holds an LL.M. degree from Georgetown University.
Federico is Biden’s second nominee for the seat that was vacated by Mary Beck Briscoe when she assumed senior status in March 2021. The president’s first choice, assistant U.S. attorney Jabari Wamble, did not receive a vote of the Senate on his nomination before the end of the 117th Congress in January 2023.
Federico is not the only U.S. Navy Reserve officer nominated this week to a federal judgeship.
Biden also tapped U.S. magistrate Joshua P. Kolar of the federal district court in South Bend, Ind. to sit on the U.S. 7th Circuit Court of Appeals. Kolar is a veteran of the Afghanistan conflict and has been in uniform since 2009. He has also been an assistant U.S. attorney and an associate at the law firm Mayer Brown LLP, as well as a law clerk to a federal district judge. Kolar earned his undergraduate and law degrees at Northwestern University.
There are four nominees to U.S. circuit courts of appeal now pending in the Senate. Two of them – Ana de Alba for the San Francisco-based U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals and Irma Carrillo Ramirez for the New Orleans-based 5th Circuit – have cleared the chamber’s Judiciary Committee and are likely to receive a confirmation vote on the floor following senators return from summer recess shortly after Labor Day.
Biden has appointed thirty-six federal appeals court judges, along with one U.S. Supreme Court justice, 103 federal district judges, three judges of the Court of Federal Claims, and one judge of the Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces.
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