President nominates Iowa district judge for next federal judge

President Obama nominated Fifth Judicial District Judge Rebecca Goodgame Ebinger to serve as the next federal judge in the Southern District of Iowa on Tuesday.

'I am pleased to nominate Rebecca Ebinger to serve on the United States District Court bench,” said President Obama. 'I am confident she will serve the American people with distinction.”

Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley, who recommended Ebinger in April, said he appreciated the White House working with him to move forward on this nomination.

'The Southern District of Iowa will benefit greatly from Judge Ebinger's background and expertise, and I have great confidence that she will serve with distinction,” Grassley said in a statement Tuesday. 'The five commissioners who made the recommendation to me, and spent hundreds of hours to vet dozens of very qualified candidates, deserve a lot of credit.”

Ebinger's nomination will next go before the U.S. Senate for a vote.

The President nominated U.S. Magistrate Leonard Terry Strand in July for the open position in the Northern District. Strand is also waiting to go before the Senate for a vote.

Both nominations are behind other federal judges nominated across the country to fill 67 current vacancies with 31 emergency vacancies, University of Richmond School of Law professor and federal judiciary expert Carl Tobias said Tuesday. Ebinger has 26 nominations ahead of her.

Tobias said Grassley, chairman of the U.S. Judiciary Committee, previously said he wouldn't skip nominees to favor one nominee over another, so it could be a long process, but Tobias thinks Ebinger and Strand will get a vote next year.

Ebinger has served as a district judge in Polk County since 2012. She previously served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Southern District from 2009 to 2012 and started out her law career as an assistant in the Northern District from 2004 to 2006. She received her Juris Doctorate from Yale Law School in 2004 and her undergraduate degree from Georgetown University in 1997.