Committee Vote Set for Eastern District Judicial Nominee

Thursday, November 29, 2012

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Committee Vote Set for Eastern District Judicial Nominee

By a MetNews Staff Writer

The U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee is scheduled to vote today on President Obama’s nomination of Sacramento Superior Court Judge Troy S. Nunley to be a judge of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California.

An agenda posted on the committee’s website lists Nunley, a judge since 2002, as one of five judicial nominees from around the country whom the committee will consider at a meeting set for 10 a.m. Eastern time.

Nunley previously served as a state deputy attorney general from 1999 until 2002. He was a deputy district attorney in Alameda County from 1991 to 1994 and in Sacramento County from 1996 to 1999, having been a sole practitioner in between.

He is a graduate of St. Mary’s College and Hastings College of the Law.

Nunley was recommended to the president by Sen. Dianne Feinstein. In pressing for a vote, she noted that weighted filings in the district, as catalogued by the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, are more than double the national average and that the average time from filing to trial for civil cases in the district is 43.6 months, compared to the national average of 24.8 months.

A majority of the American Bar Association’s evaluating committee rated Nunley “qualified” for the post, while a minority said he was “well qualified.”

Also set to be voted on today are:

•Magistrate Judge Sheri Polster Chappell of the Middle District of Florida, to be a district judge there;

•Katherine Polk Failla, chief of the Criminal Appeals Unit in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Manhattan, to be a district judge for the Southern District of New York;

•Pamela Ki Mai Chen, a federal prosecutor in Brooklyn, to be a district judge for the Eastern District of New York; and

•Mark A. Barnett, a Commerce Department attorney since 1995 and currently deputy chief counsel in the Office of Chief Counsel for Import Administration, to be a judge of the Court of International Trade.

Chen would reportedly be the first Asian-American lesbian to serve on the federal bench.