Biden picks Boardman, Griggsby for U.S. District Court for Md.

President Joe Biden said Tuesday that he intends to nominate U.S. Magistrate Judge Deborah L. Boardman and U.S. Court of Federal Claims Judge Lydia K. Griggsby to the U.S. District Court for Maryland.

If confirmed by the Senate, Boardman and Griggsby would fill two of the three coming vacancies on Maryland’s federal bench, which has courthouses in Baltimore and Greenbelt.

Boardman, through an aide, declined to comment on the nomination. Griggsby did not immediately respond Tuesday to a telephone message seeking comment.

Boardman, a native Marylander, has been as a magistrate judge for the U.S. District Court in Maryland since 2019 after serving 11 years in the federal public defender’s office for Maryland., according to a biography provided by the White House.

The 2000 University of Virginia School of Law graduate began her career as a law clerk for U.S. District Judge James C. Cacheris in eastern Virginia before moving to private practice at Hogan & Hartson, now known as Hogan Lovells.

Baltimore-born Griggsby has served on the federal claims court since 2014 after spending 10 years as an attorney in the U.S. Senate, primarily as chief counsel for privacy and information policy and privacy counsel for Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vermont, according to a White House biography.

If confirmed, she would be the first woman of color to serve as a federal judge in the district of Maryland.

Griggsby, a 1993 Georgetown University Law Center graduate, began her legal career with a two-year stint at DLA Piper in Baltimore before becoming a trial attorney in the commercial litigation branch of the U.S. Justice Department’s civil division in 1995.

Griggsby was an assistant U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia handling civil litigation from 1998 until she moved to the Senate in 2004, where she served a year as counsel for the Select Committee on Ethics before moving to Leahy’s office.

Three Maryland U.S. district court judges have recently taken senior status, which enables Biden to nominate their successors. The three judges are Richard D. Bennett, Catherine C. Blake and Ellen L. Hollander.

Boardman and Griggsby were among 11 district and circuit court of appeals nominees Biden announced Tuesday.

“This trailblazing slate of nominees draws from the very best and brightest minds of the American legal profession,” Biden said in a statement. “Each is deeply qualified and prepared to deliver justice faithfully under our Constitution and impartially to the American people – and together they represent the broad diversity of background, experience, and perspective that makes our nation strong.”

Biden nominated a racially diverse and overwhelmingly female group to federal and other judgeships, including three Black women for the U.S. courts of appeals, one pathway to the Supreme Court.

Biden promised as a candidate to nominate an African American woman to serve on the nation’s highest court  should a seat open up during his term.

With the announcement of his first slate of judicial nominees, Biden signaled his intent to counter his predecessor’s reliance on white men to fill openings on the federal bench, and to appoint judges who bring a broader range of background and life experience to the role.

Several of Biden’s nominees served as public defenders. One is a former military prosecutor. Nine of the 11 are women. The slate also includes a nominee for the Superior Court of the District of Columbia.

Biden’s group includes candidates who, if confirmed by the U.S. Senate for lifetime federal appointments, would be the first Muslim federal judge in U.S. history, the first Asian American Pacific Islander woman to serve on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

Three of the picks are Black women whom Biden wants for the federal courts of appeals, often a stepping stone to the Supreme Court. The most prominent of the trio is U.S. District Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, whom Biden is nominating to the seat left vacant on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit by Judge Merrick Garland’s departure to become Attorney General.

The two other Black women Biden wants for the appellate circuit are Tiffany Cunningham, 44, for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, based in Washington, and Candace Jackson-Akiwumi, 41, for the Chicago-based 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Both are in private practice.

The D.C. Circuit, in particular, is a place where presidents have searched for Supreme Court justices. Three of the high court’s current nine members have served on the D.C. Circuit.

Some of Biden’s candidates had been tapped for judgeships by Democratic President Barack Obama, but Republicans never allowed the full Senate to vote on them.

There currently are 72 judicial openings. The Senate, which must confirm the nominees, is split 50-50, with Vice President Kamala Harris called on to break some tie votes. Biden would need the Democratic caucus to stick together in support of his candidates if Republicans unite in opposition, though the administration hopes to attract GOP support for some, if not all, of the nominees.

Trump leaned heavily on white men to fill judicial vacancies. An Associated Press analysis found that over 86% of the more than 200 federal judges confirmed under Trump were white, the highest rate of white judicial appointments since George H.W. Bush’s presidency.

Currently, of the approximately 170 active judges on federal courts of appeals, only four are African-American women, and all are 68 or older, according to a Federal Judicial Center database.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.