President Joe Biden nominated a local Superior Court Judge and a federal magistrate judge this week to fill open seats in the U.S. District Court in San Diego.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Andrew G. Schopler and San Diego Superior Court Judge James E. Simmons were among 23 nominees for federal judicial seats announced Thursday. They will have to be confirmed by the U.S. Senate.
A statement from the White House did not clarify which seats the local nominees would take.
Judge Schopler received his J.D. from Harvard Law School in 1997 and his B.A., summa cum laude, from Dartmouth College in 1994. He worked at Rudolf and Maher in Chapel Hill, North Carolina from 1998 to 2004 He was a solo practitioner from 1997 to 1998.
Schopler served as a local assistant U.S. attorney from 2004 to 2016, then served as a magistrate judge in San Diego in 2016.
According to a biography provided by the White House, Schopler has served in the United States Army Reserve and California Army National Guard since 2014.
Judge Simmons Jr. received his J.D from Golden Gate University School of Law in 2004 and B.A. from the University of California, Berkeley in 2001.
Simmons became Deputy City Attorney in the San Diego City Attorney’s Office in 2005, and from 2006 to 2017, he served as a Deputy District Attorney in the San Diego District Attorney’s Office.
Simmons has been a judge on the California Superior Court since 2017 and is currently the Supervising Judge of the North County Branch of the San Diego Superior Court.
