President Biden names judicial nominee for Iowa’s Southern District

President Joe Biden on Wednesday announced five new federal judicial nominees, including one for the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Iowa.

The Iowa nominee is U.S. Magistrate Judge Stephen Henley Locher, who has been a federal magistrate for a year in Iowa’s Southern District.

Locher was an assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District from 2008 to 2013 before joining the Belin McCormick law practice in Des Moines.

A magna cum laude graduate of the University of Notre Dame, Locher earned his law degree at Harvard University in 2003 and then clerked for Judge John R. Gibson at the federal. 8th Circuit Court of Appeals until 2004.

Locher was recommended for the appointment in February by U.S. Sens. Chuck Grassley, the ranking member on the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Joni Ernst.

“Judge Locher has diverse legal experience and glowing credentials,” Grassley said in a statement following Wednesday’s announcement. “I urge Democrat leadership to move his nomination forward without delay.”

Ernst said Locher “is an experienced and qualified choice for this important position,” Ernst said.

Both senators praised the work on the Judicial Selection Commission in reviewing the candidates.

The commission, launched by Grassley and Ernst in December, had members from the Iowa legal community and was chaired by Cynthia Moser, a former Iowa State Bar Association president.

For more than a century, the chairman of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee has brought federal district court nominees up for committee consideration only after both home-state senators indicate their approval by signing a “blue slip,” according to the senator’s new release.

The tradition is designed to encourage strong nominees and consensus between the White House and home-state senators. It’s also consistent with the constitutional requirement that the president seek the advice and consent of the Senate for judicial nominees, the news release stated.

Other nominees announced Wednesday were:

District Courts: Nancy L. Maldonado for U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois; Gregory B. Williams for the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware.

Circuit Courts: Judge John Z. Lee for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit; and Judge Salvador Mendoza, Jr. for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit.

Biden said in a statement the nominees are “extraordinarily qualified, experienced and devoted to the rule of law and our Constitution.”

This is Biden’s 16th round of nominees for federal judicial positions and his fourth slate of nominations in 2022, bringing the number of announced federal judicial nominees to 90, according to the White House.

Comments: (319) 398-8318; trish.mehaffey@thegazette.com