President Trump has nominated Dallas Court of Appeals Justice Ada Brown to the federal bench in the Northern District of Texas, his office announced Friday.
The news marks the last nomination needed to fill the five vacancies that are currently in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas. Statewide, there are 12 judicial vacancies in the federal district courts.
Justice Brown has served on the Dallas Court of Appeals since 2013. Before that, she was in private practice at McKool Smith in Dallas, where she practiced commercial and patent infringement litigation.
But she has experience on the bench even before her most recent private practice gig. She served as judge for the Dallas County Criminal Court No. 1. She took the bench for that position at age 30, which made her the youngest sitting judge in Texas.
Before that, she was the chief prosecutor for the Dallas County District Attorney’s Office.
Brown, a Republican, entered private practice at McKool Smith in 2007 after the 2006 elections turned Dallas County blue and swept all the Republican judges out of office.
At McKool Smith, Brown represented Halliburton Energy Services in matters regarding the 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico; secured a $391 million jury verdict and permanent injunction against software company SAP for its patent infringement against Brown’s client, Versata Software; and won a $250 million verdict for an Irish inventor whose patent for a heart stent invention was ripped off.
Justice Brown got her law degree from Emory University and her bachelor’s degree from Spelman College. She has also served as Commissioner for both the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement Officer Standards and Education and the Texas Department of Public Safety.
When Gov. Rick Perry appointed Brown to Dallas’ Fifth Court of Appeals in 2013, she told The Texas Lawbook that her new job gave her the opportunity to combine her three loves: civil law, criminal law and legal writing.
“I’ve wanted to do this for quite some time,” she said in the September 2013 interview.
She will certainly get to continue to do all of the above in the Northern District.