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Appointments of judges and justices are among the longest lasting legacies a president or governor can have. With the terms of President Joe Biden and Gov. Eric Holcomb coming to an end, it is time to look back at both men’s appointments to federal and Indiana courts, the impacts of which will last decades after their respective stints as chief executive.
President Biden entered the White House in 2021 following an unprecedented deluge of judicial appointments over the previous four years.
In his first term, President Donald Trump had 234 judicial nominees confirmed by the U.S. Senate, including 54 Court of Appeals judges and three Supreme Court justices; in comparison, President Barack Obama appointed 55 Court of Appeals judges and two Supreme Court justices in his two terms.
At the start of Biden’s term, Trump-appointed judges comprised over a quarter of the federal judiciary.
Over the first half of his sole term, Biden’s judicial nominations outpaced those of his recent predecessors, as he appointed more federal judges in the first year of his presidency than any president since Ronald Reagan, and more judges in his first two years than any president since John F. Kennedy.
As of Nov. 13, 2024, Biden has confirmed 215 Article III judges, including 44 judges to the Courts of Appeals and one justice to the Supreme Court. With two months remaining in the Biden presidency, 26 nominations await Senate action, and 44 more seats remain vacant. By the time President Trump returns to the White House in January 2025, it is likely that the share of Biden-appointed federal judges will rival the share of Trump-appointed federal judges.
While the overall number of judges appointed previously by Trump and by Biden are similar, the demographic makeup of the two sets is drastically different.
Whereas 76 percent of Trump’s judicial appointments were men and 84 percent were white, almost 69 percent of Biden’s appointments are women, and more than 60 percent are non-white. Biden has also appointed 12 LGBTQ+ judges, compared to two for Trump.
Biden’s only Supreme Court appointment, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, is the first Black woman to serve on the Supreme Court. Biden also appointed dozens of judges with backgrounds in civil rights and public defense, greatly diversifying a federal bench that primarily consisted of judges who had previously worked in private practice or as prosecutors.
Looking at the Indiana federal courts, the Seventh Circuit consisted of nine Republican-appointed judges and two Democratic-appointed judges when Biden took office. Four years later, it is now a 6-5 Republican-Democrat split, with Biden replacing both Democratic-appointed judges and three Republican appointees.
The makeup of the Southern District of Indiana remains relatively unchanged, with Biden appointing only one judge, District Judge Matthew Brookman. Of the four currently-active judges, two are Republican appointees and two are Democratic appointees. In the Northern District of Indiana, Biden appointed two judges — District Judge Cristal Brisco and District Judge Gretchen Lund — who join three judges appointed by Republican presidents, a shift from the previous 4-1 balance.
At the state level, Holcomb will end his two terms in office having appointed at least 40 percent of the justices or judges on both the Indiana Supreme Court and the Indiana Court of Appeals.
Two of the five members of the Indiana Supreme Court — Justices Christopher Goff and Derek Molter — are Holcomb appointees.
Holcomb has also appointed six of the fifteen judges on the Indiana Court of Appeals, and will likely appoint a seventh to replace the retiring Judge Terry Crone. As Holcomb prepares to leave office, all five justices on the Indiana Supreme Court and more than two-thirds of the Indiana Court of Appeals will have been appointed by Republican governors.
While Biden’s and Holcomb’s time in office is drawing to a close, their respective judicial legacies are just beginning.•
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Beau Browning and Lindsay A. Llewellyn are associates at Riley Bennett Egloff LLP. Opinions expressed are those of the authors.
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