On Monday, the U.S. Senate confirmed Cindy Chung as a judge on the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia. She will be the first Asian American to serve on the 3rd Circuit, 90.5 WESA reports.
The Senate voted 50-44 to confirm Chung. According to Reuters, it is the second confirmation of a federal appeals court judge the Senate has made this year.
Chung earned her J.D. from Columbia Law School in 2002 and her B.A. from Yale University in 1997. According to a White House press release, she was a trial attorney in the Criminal Section of the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division from 2009 to 2014. Since 2014, she has served as an Assistant United States Attorney in the United States Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Pennsylvania.
Chung’s confirmation means that the 3rd Circuit Court will now have seven judges appointed by Democrats and seven judges appointed by Republicans, Reuters reports. She will hear cases from Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware and the Virgin Islands.
“She has a very distinguished record,” University of Richmond law professor Carl Tobias told WESA last summer.
Chung and the White House have not yet commented on the confirmation.
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