The Senate on Friday confirmed President Biden’s 235th judicial nominee, surpassing the record of 234 judges confirmed during President-elect Trump’s first term in office.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) marked the achievement after the Senate confirmed Serena Raquel Murillo to serve as district judge for the Central District of California.
“This Majority has now confirmed more judges under President Biden than any majority has confirmed in decades. This is historic!” Schumer announced on the Senate floor.
“We have confirmed more judges than under the Trump administration, more judges than any administration in this century, and more judges than under any administration going back decades,” he said.
Biden has appointed one Supreme Court justice — Ketanji Brown Jackson — 45 appellate court judges, 187 district judges and two International Trade Court judges.
Two-thirds of those judges are women, two-thirds are minorities and two-fifths are minority women.
Schumer noted that one out of every four active judges on the federal bench has now been nominated by Biden and confirmed by the Senate Democratic majority.
He said the Biden nominees placed on the bench include former consumer protection lawyers, labor lawyers, voting rights experts, civil rights lawyers, federal prosecutors, public defenders and teachers.
“For a long time the norm was to prioritize judicial nominees who came from a privileged pool. Most of them were prosecutors or from large corporate law firms. Most were male, most were white. But when Senate Democrats entered the majority, we cast a wider net,” he said.
Schumer thanked Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) for keeping on top of the administration to submit the necessary paperwork to advance the nominees and churning through the list of candidates.
“The Biden administration had fewer vacancies to fill than the Trump administration did — in fact, less than half. Still, we succeeded beyond what any of us could have hoped for: 235 judges confirmed,” Durbin said on the floor.
The Senate confirmed 234 of Trump’s judicial nominees during his first four years in the White House.
The Senate confirmed 170 of President Barack Obama’s judicial nominees over eight years and 204 of President George W. Bush’s 204 judicial picks over eight years.
