Biden names state Appeals Court Judge Jeffrey Bryan to Minnesota's federal bench

President Joe Biden on Thursday nominated state Court of Appeals Judge Jeffrey Bryan to become Minnesota's next U.S. district judge, which would make him the first Latino to serve on the federal bench in the state.

U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar said she will be focused on getting Senate confirmation for Bryan by the end of the year, adding that his experience as an assistant U.S. Attorney in Minnesota — where he prosecuted white-collar defendants, violent gangs, drug-trafficking organizations and career criminals — will be helpful in winning the support of Republican senators.

As a Ramsey County District Court judge, Bryan authored 180 decisions and was reversed only twice, Klobuchar said.

"I'm excited about this nominee," she said. "This is a groundbreaking nomination for the federal bench."

Braynell Estrada Britton, a Best Buy attorney who heads the Minnesota Hispanic Bar Association (MHBA), said Bryan's nomination was "very historic — the first Latino federal judge." He called Bryan "a role model for our community and for the MHBA."

Carl Tobias, a University of Richmond (Va.) law professor and an expert on federal judicial selection, said that Republicans tend to be more "comfortable" with nominees who were prosecutors as opposed to defense lawyers. He said Bryan's experience with criminal prosecutions will be useful since about half the cases on federal District Court dockets are criminal cases.

As a senior member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Klobuchar will play a major role in helping Bryan win confirmation, Tobias said. He predicted the process will go smoothly.

Bryan, 47, was one of four federal court nominees announced Thursday, two for district courts and two for appellate courts, and all of them "extraordinarily qualified, experienced, and devoted to the rule of law and our Constitution," the White House said in a statement.

According to the statement, Bryan and the other nominees "continue to fulfill the President's promise to ensure that the nation's courts reflect the diversity that is one of our greatest assets as a country — both in terms of personal and professional backgrounds."

A spokesman for the Minnesota Judicial Branch said that Bryan had no comment on his nomination.

Bryan was one of four candidates for the job recommended to Biden by Klobuchar and U.S. Sen. Tina Smith, who based their recommendations on the advice of a committee they had assembled for the task after U.S. District Judge John Tunheim announced last winter he would assume senior status.

All federal judges are nominated by the president, who traditionally follows the recommendation of the highest-ranking federal official in the state who belongs to the same party. In Minnesota that person is Klobuchar, who has collaborated with Smith, also a Democrat, on judicial nominations.

According to a tweet from the White House, Biden has had 140 judicial appointees confirmed by the Senate since he came into office in 2021. The White House said 66% were women and 66% people of color, including what it described as a record number of civil rights lawyers and public defenders.

Klobuchar said she was pleased that Bryan is the third Minnesota federal judge nominee Biden has selected. His choices, she said, represent individuals from all ends of the legal system: Kate Menendez, previously a public defender; Jerry Blackwell, who came from private practice, and now Bryan, an ex-federal prosecutor.

A native of El Paso, Texas, Bryan graduated summa cum laude from the University of Texas in 1998 and received his law degree from Yale University in 2002. He was a law clerk for U.S. District Judge Paul A. Magnuson in 2002-03 before working as an associate attorney at the Robins Kaplan Miller and Ciresi law firm in Minneapolis, where he specialized in civil litigation.

After Bryan served as an assistant U.S. Attorney for six years, he was named to the Ramsey County District Court bench in 2013 by Gov. Mark Dayton and was elected to the position the following year. While there, he co-chaired the Ramsey County Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative.

Gov. Tim Walz named Bryan to the Minnesota Court of Appeals four years ago. He was twice among four finalists for openings on the Minnesota Supreme Court, first in 2018 and again in 2020. Bryan has been married for 20 years to Liz Kramer, who is solicitor general in Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison's office.

It's not clear how long it will take to win confirmation in the closely divided U.S. Senate, where Democrats have a slim majority. Klobuchar prides herself in successfully shepherding every nominee she has proposed through the confirmation process. She said it took 89 days to get Menendez confirmed and 175 days for Blackwell, which took longer because of Senate disputes unrelated to Blackwell.

"I know he will make an excellent federal judge," said Susan Segal, chief judge of the state Court of Appeals, who was appointed to the court at the same time as Bryan and served on the committee that recommended him to Klobuchar and Smith. "He is very smart, open minded, fair and a very hard worker."

When the Star Tribune first reported in June that Bryan was expected to be Biden's nominee, Chief Judge Leonardo Castro of the Ramsey County District Court said that while Latinos have been underrepresented on the Minnesota bench, that has begun to change. About 15 Latino judges now serve in Minnesota, which according to the 2020 census has nearly 308,000 Latino residents.

Bryan's nomination will set an example for the Latino community, said Britton. "It is giving us more energy to keep working to get more Latinos on the bench," he said.

Staff writer Hunter Woodall contributed to this article.