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Nicholas Jon Ganjei

Confirmed Trump 2.0

Confirmed to the United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas.

  • AFJ Opposes
  • Court District Court
  • Date Nominated

On October 23, 2025, Donald Trump nominated Nicholas Jon Ganjei to the United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas. He was confirmed on February 3, 2026.

View/download the factsheet here.

View/download the letter of opposition here.

Watch the opposition video on Instagram.

Biography

Born in 1979 in Santa Clara, California, Ganjei earned a B.A. in History and Political Science with a minor in Public Administration from American University in 2000, and his J.D. from the University of California, Berkeley in 2005. Since 2023, he has been enrolled at Hillsdale College’s Van Andel School of Government to earn a Master’s degree in government.

Legal Experience

Ganjei held a number of unpaid internships during law school, including working as an investigator for the District of Columbia Public Defender Service Mental Health Division (summer 2001), Bay Area Legal Aid (2001-2002), and Santa Clara County Office of the Public Defender (Spring-Summer 2002). He clerked for the Torts and Condemnations Section of the Department of Justice, Office of the Attorney General for California (Summer 2003), and served as Co-Director for the Legal Aid At Work/East Bay Workers’ Rights Clinic (2003-2004). He also clerked at the Alameda County District Attorney’s office (Fall 2004) and volunteered as counsel for the John McCain 2008 campaign (Summer 2008).

Ganjei clerked for the Office of the District Attorney of New York (Summer 2004) as well as with Judge Ralph R. Erickson, for the United States District Court for the District of North Dakota (2005-2007). Following this clerkship, he served as an adjunct professor at the University of North Dakota School of Law (January 2007-May 2007). He then clerked for Judge Richard Allen Griffin, for the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit (2007-2008), worked as Assistant United States Attorney for the United States Attorney’s Office for the District of New Mexico (2008-2020), and during this time, worked as a detailee with the United States Department of Justice, Office of Legal Policy (2018-2019). From 2012-2018, Ganjei also served as an Adjunct Professor at the University of New Mexico’s Department of Political Science.

He joined the United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Texas in 2020, serving as First Assistant United States Attorney (2020-2021), then as Acting United States Attorney (2021) before serving as Chief Counsel for Senator Ted Cruz (2022-2025). He currently serves as United States Attorney for the Southern District of Texas (January 2025-present).

Key Facts & Context

  • Ganjei has ties to conservative and far-right groups, including memberships, fellowships, and participation as panelists with these organizations:
  • Ganjei served as a panelist and helped moderate a number of Federalist Society events around the country, including for the Texas chapter (September 2024), UC Berkeley’s Federalist Society (April 2023, 2024), and Federalist Society Colorado Lawyer’s Chapter (August 20, 2024)
  • Ganjei appeared as a panelist for a talk titled, “How to Make it On the Hill,” with American Compass, a think tank, “charting the course for conservative economics,” that has ties to JD Vance and Marco Rubio.
  • Ganjei has parroted the Trump administration’s xenophobic and racist rhetoric by retweeting ICE propaganda, and repeatedly using phrases like, “illegal alien” in his press releases as part of arrests tied to Trump’s Operation Take Back America, which prioritizes, “repelling the invasion of illegal immigration” and “restoring the death penalty.”
  • While serving as Assistant US Attorney Ganjei was arrested by Albuquerque police for driving while intoxicated (DWI), speeding, with no proof of insurance. (KOB 4, December 7, 2014)
  • As a third year law student at UC Berkeley, Ganjei started his own counter-petition that disagreed with the Berkeley students and faculty who called for Professor John Yoo’s resignation. Following accounts of the Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse scandal, Yoo’s leaked “torture memos” were used to justify the Bush administration’s use of torture techniques during its “War on Terror.” Ganjei shared he thought the original petition was “disingenuous…[t]he original petitioners, while trying to punish Yoo for speech made as an official, are meting our punishment against him as a professor.” (National Jurist, October 2004). He notes, “I started the counter-petition to show that the attacks on Yoo were not universally shared..” Ganjei’s petition noted, “the proposed retaliatory measures (against Yoo) would undo decades of free speech tradition at UC Berkeley, which has been a haven for both mass movements and the exposition of unpopular opinions.” (The Sacramento Bee, May 26, 2004)
  • Other memberships include:
    • Texas Lyceum (2025 – Present)
    • Teneo (2022 – Present)
    • Leadership New Mexico (2018 -Present)
    • Albuquerque Country Club (2020 – 2021)
    • Young Professionals of Albuquerque (2018 – 2021)
    • Albuquerque Community Foundation / Future Fund (2017 – 2021)

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