Wednesday, Nov. 3, 2021 | 2:30 p.m.
President Joe Biden on Wednesday nominated a state court judge and a law school professor to fill two U.S. District Court vacancies in Nevada.
Judge Cristina D. Silva has served on the state District Court in Las Vegas since 2019 and previously was an assistant U.S. attorney in Nevada and an assistant state attorney in Florida.
Anne Rachel Traum is a law professor and associate dean at UNLV. She previously worked as a federal government attorney in several capacities, including as an assistant public defender and as special counsel in the Office for Access to Justice at the United States Department of Justice.
Nevada's U.S. senators, Democrats Catherine Cortez Masto and Jacky Rosen, said the White House selected Silva and Traum from a list of candidates vetted by the senators’ bipartisan judicial commissions.
The nominations are subject to Senate confirmation.
President Barack Obama previously nominated Traum but her nomination was blocked by then-Sen. Dean Heller, R-Nev., and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., who halted judicial confirmations following the 2016 death of Supreme Court Associate Justice Antonin Scalia, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported.
