Reuters: Trump to nominate new federal judges in Texas, two other states
This excerpt is from a piece that originally ran on October 28, 2025.
They include U.S. Attorney Nicholas Ganjei in Houston, a former chief counsel to Republican Senator Ted Cruz who is being nominated to serve as a life-tenured judge in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas.
Trump is also nominating U.S. Attorney Clay Fowlkes in the Western District of Arkansas to serve as a judge in his district. He has been in his position since 2020, when the prior office holder resigned during Trump’s first administration.
The third nominee is Aaron Peterson, an attorney in the Alaska Department of Law’s natural resources litigation section who, if confirmed, would fill one of the two current vacancies in the state, which is down to just one active federal judge.
Their names were first reported publicly on the website of the liberal legal advocacy group Alliance for Justice.
A spokesperson for Senator Chuck Grassley, the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, confirmed that the panel received questionnaire materials for Ganjei, Fowlkes, and Peterson and provided copies of them to Reuters, while noting the committee has not received their formal nominations.