Trump Plans to Tap First-Term Judge Picks for Appeals Courts (1)

President Donald Trump announced plans to nominate two of his first term judicial picks to be federal appellate judges.

Trump said Monday he will nominate Daniel Traynor, currently a judge on the US District Court for the District of North Dakota, for the US Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, and Daniel Domenico, chief judge of the US District Court for the District of Colorado, for the US Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit.

Traynor has served since January 2020 as a judge on North Dakota federal trial court, after he was nominated by Trump in 2019. He has overseen litigation filed by the state of North Dakota seeking to recoup millions in alleged damages stemming from its costs of responding to protests over the Dakota Access Pipeline in 2016.

Traynor was one of more than a dozen federal judges who signed a letter last year promising not to hire law clerks from Columbia over its handling of student protests on the Israel-Hamas war. A chief federal appeals court judge later dismissed a misconduct complaint against him over the hiring boycott.

Traynor would fill a vacancy left open by Judge Ralph Erickson, who said last month he would take senior status, a form of semi-retirement, once his successor is confirmed. Erickson was the first of Trump’s first-term circuit appointees to announce plans to step back from the bench. Trump has also nominated his former personal attorney Justin Smith for another opening on the Eighth Circuit.

Domenico had clerked for Judge Timothy Tymkovich, the George W. Bush appointee whose seat he’ll be filling on the appellate court. He spent nearly a decade as solicitor general of Colorado and represented the state twice before the US Supreme Court.

As a trial judge, Domenico ruled in favor of the Trump administration’s stance on mandatory detention for noncitizens arrested within the United States.

He’s also presided over religious liberty cases, including one where he blocked state authorities from enforcing a law against a Christian clinic that would have prevented it from giving patients a medication thought to reverse medication abortions.

Trump also announced several nominees to federal district courts in Texas, Pennsylvania, and Michigan.

He said he would nominate Antonio Pozos, a partner at Faegre Drinker, to serve as a judge on the Philadelphia-based US District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. Pozos was previously a federal prosecutor in the Justice Department’s criminal fraud section, according to the firm.

Michael Martin, a federal prosecutor, will be tapped to sit on the US District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan, Trump said. Martin is currently the criminal chief for the US attorney’s office for the district and has experience leading national security and immigration cases, according to the office’s website.

Trump said he would nominate Kirkland & Ellis partner Kasdin Mitchell, a former clerk for Justice Clarence Thomas on the U.S. Supreme Court and Judge William H. Pryor Jr. on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, to the US District Court for the Northern District of Texas.

Angela Colmenero, currently deputy chief of staff to Texas governor Greg Abbott, will be nominated to the US District Court of Southern District of Texas.