No president in U.S. history is having as much impact on the federal courts in Texas as President Trump.
On Friday, President Trump nominated Texas Supreme Court Justice Jeff Brown and Texas Deputy First Assistant Attorney General Brantley Starr to Article III judgeships in Texas.
In his two years in office, President Trump has nominated 15 individuals to lifetime positions as U.S. District Court judges and five to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.
The New Orleans-based Fifth Circuit, which hears federal appeals from Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas, was viewed as the most conservative federal court of appeals in the U.S. before President Trump took office. The 17-judge appeals bench includes two Bill Clinton appointments, two Ronald Reagan appointments, four George W. Bush appointments and three Barack Obama appointments.
But President Trump has already nominated – and the U.S. Senate has confirmed – five appellate judges to the Fifth Circuit, including Andrew Oldham, Don Willett, James Ho, Kyle Duncan and Kurt Engelhardt. The Fifth Circuit, which also has 10 senior status judges, has one position open.
The Senate has confirmed five Trump nominees to the U.S. District Courts in Texas, including Karen Gren Scholer in the Northern District, Jeremy Kernodle in the Eastern District, Alan Albright and David Counts in the Western District and Fernando Rodriguez in the Southern District.
Ten Trump nominees – including Brown and Starr – are awaiting Senate approval.
Justice Brown has been on the Supreme Court of Texas since 2013. A graduate of the University of Houston Law Center, Justice Brown served on the Texas Fourteenth Court of Appeals in Houston and as a trial judge on the state’s 55th District Court
Starr, who clerked for now Fifth Circuit Judge Don Willett when Willett was on the Texas Supreme Court, has worked for state Attorney General Ken Paxton since 2015. A graduate of the University of Texas School of Law, Starr worked as a staff lawyer for then Texas Solicitor Ted Cruz and as an appellate lawyer at King & Spalding.