Monday, April 18, 2011
Page 3
Sheri Pym Named Magistrate Judge for Central District of California
By a MetNews Staff Writer
The U.S. District Court for the Central District of California named Sheri Pym as magistrate judge Friday.
Pym, who had been an assistant U.S. attorney, took the oath Friday, a court spokesperson said. Magistrate judges are selected by the district judges, but are required to undergo background checks, including IRS investigation, before their appointments are finalized and announced publicly.
Pym fills the vacancy created by the retirement of Judge Rosalyn M. Chapman in November 2010 and has been assigned to sit in the court’s Eastern Division in Riverside.
Pym served as chief of the United States Attorney’s Riverside branch office before being tapped for the bench, and before that, she was an associate at Milberg Weiss LLP in San Diego.
She graduated from Williams College in 1989 and earned her law degree from UCLA in 1994.
The Central District of California has 24 authorized full-time and one part-time magistrate judge positions. The duties of magistrate judges include conducting preliminary proceedings in criminal cases, the trial and disposition of misdemeanor cases, conducting discovery and various other pretrial hearings in civil cases, the trial and disposition of civil cases upon consent of the litigants, and other matters as may be assigned.
Full-time magistrate judges are appointed for eight-year terms and are eligible for reappointment.
The Central District of California is comprised of the counties of Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, Ventura, Santa Barbara, and San Luis Obispo, and serves approximately 19.4 million people—more than half the state’s population.
In 2010, more than 15,000 cases were filed in the district.
Copyright 2011, Metropolitan News Company