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Trump Nominates Five Conservative Judges for Alabama, Mississippi Federal Courts

By  |  August 13, 2025

U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday announced the nomination of five new judges to federal trial courts in Alabama and Mississippi, expanding his push to install more conservative jurists in Republican-led states, according to Reuters.

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    The nominations, revealed on Trump’s social media platform, came about a week after the Senate Judiciary Committee quietly received completed questionnaires for all five candidates on August 6, per Reuters. Senator Chuck Grassley’s office confirmed the committee’s receipt of the documents. With the Republican-controlled Senate currently in recess until September, formal confirmation proceedings are expected to resume when lawmakers return.

    These latest picks bring the total number of life-tenured judges Trump has nominated in his second term to 21. During his first term, Trump successfully appointed 234 judges, a record that shifted the federal judiciary further to the right.

    Among the nominees is Edmund LaCour, Alabama’s solicitor general, whose previous bid for a federal judgeship in 2020 was blocked when then-Democratic Senator Doug Jones declined to return a “blue slip,” a Senate tradition requiring approval from both home-state senators for district court nominees. Trump renominated LaCour in his final days in office in January 2021, but President Joe Biden withdrew the nomination shortly after taking office. Now, with both Alabama senators being Republicans, LaCour’s confirmation prospects are expected to improve.

    LaCour has previously championed conservative legal positions, including arguments in support of gun rights and abortion restrictions. In 2022, he argued before the U.S. Supreme Court in favor of a Republican-backed congressional map in Alabama. The following year, the Court ruled 5-4 that the map violated the Voting Rights Act by diminishing the political influence of Black voters.

    Trump also tapped Harold Mooty, a partner at Bradley Arant Boult Cummings, for a seat on the Northern District of Alabama, and Alabama Supreme Court Justice Bill Lewis for the Middle District of Alabama.

    In Mississippi, Trump nominated two Republican state supreme court justices, James Maxwell and Robert Chamberlin, to the federal bench in the Northern District. In April, Maxwell authored an 8-1 decision preventing a transgender teenager from legally changing his name to align with his gender identity, a ruling Chamberlin joined.

    According to Reuters, these nominations represent the latest phase in Trump’s effort to cement a lasting conservative influence on the federal judiciary.

    Source: Reuters