Northern District nominees sent to Senate floor after judiciary committee votes

Holly Brady and Damon Leichty, nominees to the Northern Indiana District Court, are a step closer to confirmation after the US. Senate Committee on the Judiciary voted in favor of their nominations Thursday and sent their names to the Senate floor.  

Brady and Leichty were among the 44 federal judicial nominees the White House sent back to Capitol Hill after they did not get confirmed before the 115^th Congress adjourned. Previously, the judiciary committee did send Brady’s nomination to the Senate floor on a partisan vote, but Leichty’s nomination did not receive a committee vote because former Sen. Jeff Flake, an Arizona Republican, refused to consider any nominees until the Senate protected the Mueller investigation.

This time, the judiciary committee again approved Brady’s nomination, but she did not get any Democratic support, passing on a party-line 12-10 vote. Leichty, however, along with five other judicial nominees, was approved in a unanimous voice vote.

Should Brady and Leichty be confirmed, the district courts in Indiana will have no empty seats for the first time since June 30, 2014 when Judge Sarah Evans Barker of the Southern Indiana District Court took senior status.

The vacancies in the Northern Indiana District Court were created when Judges Joseph Van Bokkelen and Robert Miller, Jr., took senior status. Brady will succeed Van Bokkelen and Leichty will succeed Miller, the judge for whom he clerked from 2001 to 2003.

A native of Fort Wayne, Brady earned law degree from Valparaiso University Law School in 1994 and a civil mediator certificate from Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law in 2013. She has spent her entire legal career in private practice, focusing primarily on employment and labor law, and is currently an attorney at Haller & Colvin, P.C.

Leichty was born in Rensselaer and earned his J.D. degree from Indiana University Maurer School of Law in 1999. He has spent his career in private practice at Barnes & Thornburg LLP in South Bend, where he practices in the litigation department, handling complex civil litigation. Since 2017, he has been an adjunct professor at Notre Dame Law School.