U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer recommended that President Joe Biden elevate the Manhattan federal judge overseeing the sex-abuse trial of British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell to the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, Reuters reported.
Biden later nominated U.S. District Judge Alison Nathan to become the second openly lesbian woman to serve as a federal appellate judge, after the U.S. Senate approved Beth Robinson for a seat on the same New York-based court this month.
Nathan, 49, was nominated by former Democratic President Barack Obama to the district court bench in 2011, after serving as a special assistant to Obama and associate White House counsel from 2009 to 2010.
Maxwell, who prosecutors say recruited and groomed underage girls for deceased financier Jeffrey Epstein to abuse, has pled not guilty to sex trafficking and other crimes.
According to her U.S. Senate questionnaire for district judge, Nathan graduated from Cornell University in 1994 and from Cornell Law School (magna cum laude) in 2000.
