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The Surest Path to a Federal Judgeship Is Being One of Trump's Lawyers - Prof. JP Collins @ Balls and Strikes
Balls and StrikesAlthough President Donald Trump has had to wait for new judicial vacancies to come in lately, he and Senate Republicans (and even some Senate Democrats) have been busy moving Trump’s nominees for existing vacancies smoothly through the Senate. Trump has already announced 11 nominees in 2026—including another one of his personal lawyers for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit—and seen seven more confirmed, several with bipartisan support.
In January, Trump nominated Chris Wolfe and Andrew Davis to the Western District of Texas, John Shepherd to the Western District of Arkansas, and Anna St. John to the Eastern District of Louisiana. Wolfe, 53, has spent the bulk of his career as a prosecutor before becoming a state court judge. Davis, 40, worked as an assistant state solicitor general in Texas before serving as Senator Ted Cruz’s chief counsel.
Shepherd, 39, was in private practice in Arkansas before becoming a state court judge. Shepherd’s father is Judge Bobby Shepherd, who currently sits on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. This is the second time in as many nomination announcements that Trump has tapped the child of a sitting circuit judge: Back in November, Trump nominated Megan Benton, the daughter of retiring Eighth Circuit Judge Duane Benton, to a district court seat in Missouri.
Concerns about hereditary judgeships aside, St. John, 46, has the most overtly troubling record of the four. She has spent most of her career working to undermine LGBTQ+ rights, authoring briefs arguing that businesses should be allowed to discriminate against LGBTQ+ people on religious grounds, and opposing the inclusion of transgender women in women’s sports and beauty pageants. St. John was also a visiting fellow at the Independent Women’s Forum, a right-wing think tank that has hailed Trump’s efforts to “end woke discrimination against white men.”
In January, Trump nominated Chris Wolfe and Andrew Davis to the Western District of Texas, John Shepherd to the Western District of Arkansas, and Anna St. John to the Eastern District of Louisiana. Wolfe, 53, has spent the bulk of his career as a prosecutor before becoming a state court judge. Davis, 40, worked as an assistant state solicitor general in Texas before serving as Senator Ted Cruz’s chief counsel.
Shepherd, 39, was in private practice in Arkansas before becoming a state court judge. Shepherd’s father is Judge Bobby Shepherd, who currently sits on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. This is the second time in as many nomination announcements that Trump has tapped the child of a sitting circuit judge: Back in November, Trump nominated Megan Benton, the daughter of retiring Eighth Circuit Judge Duane Benton, to a district court seat in Missouri.
Concerns about hereditary judgeships aside, St. John, 46, has the most overtly troubling record of the four. She has spent most of her career working to undermine LGBTQ+ rights, authoring briefs arguing that businesses should be allowed to discriminate against LGBTQ+ people on religious grounds, and opposing the inclusion of transgender women in women’s sports and beauty pageants. St. John was also a visiting fellow at the Independent Women’s Forum, a right-wing think tank that has hailed Trump’s efforts to “end woke discrimination against white men.”
If you are an ambitious conservative lawyer who wants to be a federal judge, the smartest thing you can do is get Trump to hire you on to his personal legal team
— Balls & Strikes (@ballsandstrikes.org) 2026-02-25T17:12:00.982Z
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