The Trump administration moved to fill two bench vacancies in the Western District of Texas Wednesday with the appointment of litigator Andrew Davis as a U.S. District Judge in Austin and State Judge Chris Wolfe as U.S. District Judge in Waco.
Davis, a partner at the litigation firm of Lehotsky Keller Cohn, is a former chief counsel to Sen. Ted Cruz on the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Wolfe serves in Fort Worth as presiding judge of the 213th District in Tarrant County.
Davis earned his J.D. at Columbia Law School in 2012 where he was named executive editor of the Columbia Journal of Law and Social Problems. He clerked for Judge Reena Raggi of the U.S. Court of Appeals of the Second Circuit and for U.S. District Judge Sidney Fitzwater in the Northern District of Texas.
Prior to his U.S. Senate staff service, Davis was an assistant solicitor general for the State of Texas where he helped successfully defend a Texas redistricting plan before the U.S. Supreme Court.
In private practice, he was also a litigator at Gibson Dunn & Crutcher where he represented clients from a variety of industrial sectors and worked, for a time, with Accenture as a business consultant working primarily with power utility companies.
Judge Wolfe earned his J.D. from Baylor University where had also attended as an undergraduate. He will be filling the seat left vacant by U.S. District Judge Alan Albright who relocated from Waco to Austin.
Before assuming the bench in Tarrant County in 2018, Wolfe spent nearly 16 years as a prosecutor U.S. Attorney’s Office in Fort Worth.
Sen. John Cornyn said he is “proud” to support the nominations of both.
“Judge Wolfe has a proven track record of upholding the rule of law as a State District Judge in Fort Worth, while Mr. Davis has a wealth of experience in the legal field, from his service to the Senate Judiciary Committee to his time as Assistant Solicitor General for the State of Texas. I was honored to join Senator Cruz in recommending both Texans to serve on the federal bench, and I urge my colleagues to join us in supporting their nominations.”
Said Sen. Cruz: “I applaud President Trump’s decision to nominate Andrew Davis and Chris Wolfe as U.S. District Judges in Texas. Andrew previously served as my chief counsel, and I am confident that both he and Chris will make excellent district judges who will uphold the integrity of the law to the highest degree. I look forward to their swift confirmation.”