Diane Gujarati’s nomination for Federal Judgeship approved by Senate

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The Senate Judiciary Committee has approved the nomination of Indian American Diane Gujarati to the federal judgeship seat in the Eastern District of New York to full Senate.

Gujarati was nominated by President Donald Trump on May 10 and had actually been nominated to the bench while President Barack Obama was still in office however; her confirmation remained pending when Trump was elected.

Gujarati is the deputy chief of the criminal division of the federal prosecutor’s office for the Southern District of New York, and the seat for which she has been nominated for covers parts of the city as well the suburbs on Long Island.

According to a press release, the nomination by Trump shows both her legal standing as well as the administration’s difficulty in finding candidates within its ideological spectrum who will be able to win Senate support.

“Diane Gujarati is an experienced litigator with a long and distinguished record of public service. She will serve admirably on the District Court for the Eastern District of New York. I urge the Senate to quickly confirm Ms. Gujarati to the court,” Pankit J. Doshi, the president of the National Asian Pacific American Bar Association, said in a statement.

Gujarati has been deputy chief of the criminal division of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York since 2012, and she has served as an assistant U.S. attorney in the Criminal Division since 1999.

She received her J.D. from Yale Law School and graduated summa cum laude from Barnard College of Columbia University in 1990.

She has also previously served as deputy chief of the White Plains Division of the U.S Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York before being promoted to chief of that office, and then was deputy chief of the appeals unit in the criminal division of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York from 2006 to 2008.

Prior to joining the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Gujarati was an associate in the New York office of Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP from 1996 to 1999, having began her legal career as a law clerk to the Honorable John M. Walker, Jr. of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in 1995.

Gujarati also serves on the Board of Directors for the Asian American Bar Association of New York and has been a member of AABANY since 2013 and has volunteered on its women and judiciary committees.