The Senate on Tuesday confirmed President Biden's first nominee to the federal bench, approving with bipartisan support Julien Neals for the U.S. district court in New Jersey and Regina Rodriguez to the federal district court in Colorado (article available here).
Neals will join the federal bench after serving as county counsel and acting county administrator for Bergen County, New Jersey. He served in numerous positions in Newark city government, including as chief judge of the Newark Municipal Court. He was nominated to the district court in New Jersey by then-President Obama in 2015, but his nomination stalled in the Republican-controlled Senate.
Rodriguez is a former prosecutor and a partner at a corporate law and lobbying firm that has a Denver office. She was nominated for a judgeship in the U.S. District Court of Colorado by former President Barack Obama in 2016 but was not considered by the Republican-controlled Senate. She will be the first Asian-American judge in Colorado. Rodriguez is the daughter of a Mexican-American father and a Japanese-American mother whose family was relocated to an internment camp in Wyoming during World War II. She headed the Colorado U.S. attorney office's civil rights division.