Tuesday, March 26, 2013
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Sacramento Jurist Confirmed to Federal Court
By a METNEWS Staff Writer
The U.S. Senate has confirmed Sacramento Superior Court Judge Troy L. Nunley as a U.S. district judge for the Eastern District of California.
Nunley was confirmed by voice vote Saturday morning as senators rushed to complete business before the Easter recess.
Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who recommended Nunley for the post, issued the following statement yesterday:
“I’m very pleased the Senate confirmed Judge Troy Nunley to serve as District Court Judge for the Eastern District of California. Judge Nunley brings more than a decade of judicial experience to the Sacramento federal bench, which has the most overburdened federal judges in the country.
“Judge Nunley’s confirmation is a small step to help relieve the pressure in the Eastern District, but there is more to do. I will continue the fight to add more judgeships to the California’s Eastern District, which has suffered from unsustainable caseloads for years.
“The Eastern District has 1,141 weighted filings per authorized judgeship—more than double the national average. It takes a criminal case 30 percent longer to be completed than it did in 2009, and a civil case takes nearly four years to get to trial, up nearly 50 percent from two years ago and nearly twice the national average.”
Nunley, who grew up in the Hunter’s Point housing project in San Francisco, is a graduate of Saint Mary’s College and Hastings College of the Law. Following law school, he worked from 1990 through 1994 as a deputy district attorney in Alameda County, then operated his own practice until becoming a Sacramento County deputy district attorney, serving from 1996 through 1999.
He was a state deputy attorney general in the Appeals, Writs, and Trials Section from 1999 until then-Gov. Gray Davis named him to the bench in 2002.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., in a statement prior to the confirmation, praised the nominee and criticized delays in the confirmation process.
“Judge Nunley could and should have been confirmed last year when the Judiciary Committee reported his nomination unanimously. Instead he was among those Republican Senators refused to consider before adjourning. The President had to renominate him and the Senate Judiciary Committee again voted unanimously to proceed with his nomination...more than a month ago.”
Two district judges in other parts of the country were confirmed Saturday as well.
Ketanji Brown Jackson, a member of the U.S. Sentencing Commission, will sit in the District of Columbia and Raymond P. Moore, currently federal public defender for the districts of Colorado and Wyoming, will sit in the District of Colorado.
The confirmations of Nunley, Jackson, and Moore leave 15 nominations awaiting action by the full Senate, Leahy noted in his statement.
It was also announced that the Senate had reached a unanimous consent agreement to vote April 8 on the nomination of Patty Shwartz to the Third U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Shwartz is a magistrate judge in the District of New Jersey and an adjunct professor at Fordham University School of Law in New York.
Copyright 2013, Metropolitan News Company