The federal judiciary's vacancy table, updated November 10, lists 28 empty judgeships. Every one is on a district court, the trial level of the federal system. Seventeen of them have no nominee.
That count matters this month because the Senate that would confirm any nominee has a deadline. The new Congress convenes on January 3, 2027, 54 days from Tuesday. "Democrats won back the Senate, but Republicans still control it until January," the legal commentary site Balls and Strikes wrote on November 9, in a piece that counted 23 judicial nominees pending.
What the committee had in front of it on Tuesday
The Senate Judiciary Committee's revised agenda for its November 10 business meeting lists 10 judicial nominees. One is for an appeals court: Lee Philip Rudofsky, a federal district judge in Arkansas, nominated to the Eighth Circuit. The other nine are district court nominees: Daniel Lewis Ballou for the Eastern District of Kentucky, Richard Wesley Bennett for the Southern District of Texas, Courtney Leigh Coker for the Northern District of Texas, Robert E. Long Jr. for the Middle District of Florida, Peter M. Mansfield for the Eastern District of Louisiana, Jesus A. Osete for the Western District of Missouri, Trevor Scott Pemberton for the Northern District of Oklahoma, Kyle Frederick Reardon for Alaska and Zachary Paul West for the Eastern District of Oklahoma. The page showed no results when we checked.
A nominations hearing followed the same day. Its first panel was Todd Butler, nominated to the Fifth Circuit. The second panel included three district court nominees, Samuel D. Adkisson for the Eastern District of Tennessee, Philip Axt for North Dakota and Bradford J. Kelley for the Eastern District of Louisiana, along with an assistant attorney general nominee, Arthur Kleinschmidt.
Balls and Strikes reported that three judicial nominees were already waiting for a floor vote: Daniel Domenico for the Tenth Circuit, Anna St. John for the Fifth Circuit and Gregory Cook for the Northern District of Alabama. It also reported a second hearing set for November 18 and listed the Senate's remaining session days as November 9 and 10, the week of November 16 and November 30 through December 18.
Our count of the vacancy tables
We read the three tables the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts publishes: current vacancies, future vacancies and judicial emergencies, all dated November 10.
Of the 28 current vacancies, 22 opened when a judge took senior status, 2 when a judge resigned, 2 on retirement, 1 on a death and 1 when a judge was elevated to a higher court. Eleven have a nominee. Ten of those 11 nominations are dated September 14, 2026, which was 57 days before Tuesday. The eleventh, Cook's, is dated July 14.
The median vacancy is 400 days old by our arithmetic from the vacancy dates. Sixteen of the 28 have been open more than a year. The oldest, in the Southern District of California, dates to August 1, 2021, when Judge William Q. Hayes took senior status. It has been open 1,927 days and has no nominee.
The judiciary labels 15 of the 28 vacancies as judicial emergencies, a designation based on caseload and how long a seat has been empty. Five of those 15 have a nominee. The heaviest load among them is in South Carolina, where the table shows 1,095 weighted filings per judgeship for the seat Judge Timothy M. Cain left on October 1.
The future vacancies table lists 15 more seats that judges have announced they will leave, including four on appeals courts. Two are on the Fifth Circuit, where Judges Kurt D. Engelhardt and Leslie H. Southwick are taking senior status, one is on the Eighth, where Judge Bobby E. Shepherd is, and one is on the Tenth, where Judge Timothy M. Tymkovich is. St. John is listed for Engelhardt's seat, Rudofsky for Shepherd's and Domenico for Tymkovich's. Southwick's has no nominee on the table, though Butler is nominated to the Fifth Circuit.
Across both tables we count 16 named nominees. The 23 that Balls and Strikes counts include seven more whose nominations had not yet appeared in the judiciary's tables, among them Butler.
Where the empty seats are
All 11 pending nominees for current vacancies are for seats in Alabama, Alaska, Florida, Kentucky, Louisiana, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Texas, states that each have two Republican senators. Of the 17 vacancies with no nominee, by our count using each state's current Senate delegation, 13 are in states with two Democratic senators: two in Massachusetts, three in the Southern District of New York, one each in Connecticut, Virginia, Illinois, Minnesota, New Mexico and Georgia, and two in California. The other four are in Maine, South Carolina and two Texas districts. The records we read do not explain the pattern, and we draw no conclusion about why individual seats have no nominee.
What to watch
The committee's next hearing is set for November 18, according to Balls and Strikes, and the Senate's last scheduled session day is December 18. Any nomination not confirmed when this Congress ends on January 3 is returned to the president under Senate rules and would have to be sent again to the new Senate.
The judiciary has had other personnel fights this fall, including a ruling that Bill Essayli was unlawfully serving as a de facto U.S. attorney. For judicial selection by voters rather than senators, see our count of Texas's ten statewide judicial races.
Two Taps News stories summarize reporting and the analysis discussed on Two Taps and Friends. They are not legal advice. Read our standards.
