Nate Raymond

(Reuters] President Joe Biden moved Wednesday to increase diversity in the Federal Bench’s demographics and work experience by naming five new judicial nominees. Two of them are women from public defender backgrounds who will be serving as appellate judges.

Lara Montecalvo is the Rhode Island’s highest-ranking public defender. Biden has nominated her to be a member of the Boston-based U.S.. Circuit Court of Appeals and U.S. district judge Sarah Merriam from Connecticut join the New York-based Second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

The nominees also include Ana Reyes, a litigator at law firm Williams & Connolly who immigrated to the United States as a child and would become the first Hispanic woman and openly LGBTQ person to serve as a district court judge in Washington, D.C.

Biden and two additional nominees from New York’s district court have nominated at least 92 federal appellate or district court judges since he took office last year.

Senate Democrats want to confirm all the nominations before November’s midterm elections, while retaining their 50-50 control over the chamber.

Biden picked a majority of women and people of colour as his picks. Some have backgrounds that are not in corporate law or as prosecutors. Others may be more traditional judges’ career tracks, such 27 of whom were public defenders for the poor.

Those are Ketanji brown Jackson who was confirmed by the Senate this month as the first Black woman to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court.

The public defenders of three of Wednesday’s nominees were Merriam, Montecalvo and Elizabeth Hanes. Elizabeth Hanes is a magistrate judge who was nominated for the Eastern District of Virginia.

Merriam was appointed by Biden to the current position. She was then confirmed by Senate with a vote of 54 to 46.

On Wednesday, Biden nominated Anne Nardacci (a partner in law firm Boies Schiller Flexner) to be a Federal District Court Judge in the Northern District of New York.