Twelve days before Judge Tymkovich announced semi-retirement, his former clerk received a judicial nomination
The timing is interesting — and it could be part of a larger project to create more vacancies.
One week ago, Judge Timothy Tymkovich of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit sent a letter to Trump notifying him that he intends to take senior status upon the confirmation of a successor. “It is my intention to continue to render substantial judicial service as a senior judge,” he wrote.
He was the third circuit court judge in late February who decided to take senior status.
Twelve days before Judge Tymkovich’s announcement, Trump nominated Katie Lane, a lawyer at the Republican National Committee, to serve on the U.S. District Court for the District of Montana. Lane graduated from law school in 2017 and lacks the necessary legal experience to be a federal judge. But in her very short professional career, she does have experience clerking for two federal judges: Thomas Varlan of the Eastern District of Tennessee and Timothy Tymkovich.
Earlier this year, I wrote about Trump’s lack of circuit court vacancies and whether he might be pursuing new strategies to create additional openings — by rewarding a retiring circuit court judge with a nomination for their child, by coaxing a circuit court judge into retirement by nominating their child, or by appointing a judge’s former clerks to ensure their judicial legacy remains.
This is already happening, though it is unclear whether these events are connected.
On the same day that Eighth Circuit Judge Duane Benton announced he was taking senior status last year, his daughter Megan Benton was notified by the White House Counsel’s Office that there would be an FBI background check related to her possible nomination. Exactly three weeks later, on November 14, Trump called her and said she would be nominated to the Western District of Missouri.
Two days earlier, on November 12, Trump called John Thomas Shepherd and told him that if a vacancy arose on the federal bench in Arkansas, he would be the nominee. Shepherd was indeed nominated earlier this year, and his father — Judge Bobby Shepherd of the Eighth Circuit — is eligible to take senior status. Now that his son is poised to be a federal judge, Trump hopes he will do so.
Trump last year also appointed multiple of Judge Raymond Gruender’s former clerks to judgeships in Missouri — perhaps as a reassurance that his seat will be in trusted hands if he takes senior status when he’s eligible in 2028.
This is what makes Lane’s nomination 12 days before Judge Tymkovich’s announcement so interesting. Did the White House pledge to nominate more of his clerks — including, perhaps, for the vacancy he created — to the federal bench? Judge Tymkovich does, after all, have a close relationship with his clerks. On a podcast in October, he said:
I’ve tried to maintain relationships with my former clerks as they go off into their careers around the country and around the world, and I, I just really enjoy that part of the job. My wife, Suzanne, I think would say the same thing. She’s become friends with clerks. We do a weekend outing every fall. We do a ski weekend with current clerks and former clerks that are interested in joining us.
There are many former Tymkovich clerks for the White House to choose from. During Trump’s first term, for example, he appointed Judge Daniel Domenico to the District of Colorado. He could elevate Judge Domenico to the Tenth Circuit, though his district court seat would then likely remain empty as long as blue slips for district court seats are honored. Judge Domenico also just became the chief judge of the district court in Colorado.
Another former Tymkovich clerk, Josh Craddock, is currently a deputy assistant attorney general in the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel. When Katie Lane was nominated last month, Craddock posted on X: “President Trump just made a stellar nomination to the bench in Montana! So excited for my co-clerk Katie Lane, who will be a conservative stalwart for decades to come.” He also posted about Tymkovich taking senior status, calling him “a lion of the Tenth Circuit and an American patriot who has defended the rule of law for more than two decades on the bench.”
Craddock graduated from law school in 2018. He has been called out by organizations like the Center for Reproductive Rights and Planned Parenthood for his record of extremism, including writing “extensively in favor of fetal personhood, including promoting legal theories which claim that the Fourteenth Amendment requires equal protection beginning at conception.” Journalist Susan Rinkunas also documented his record in this piece, noting that Craddock opposes traditional in vitro fertilization and “co-wrote a proposal with Americans United for Life for a president to sign an executive order to establish fetal personhood and ban all abortion.”
Michael Francisco, who also clerked for Judge Tymkovich, attended Hillsdale College and appears to have been a Blackstone legal fellow and allied attorney at the Alliance Defending Freedom (an SPLC-designated hate group). He is now a partner at a law firm that believes “the rule of law and our rights under the Constitution are immutable, not subject to prevailing cultural and political winds.” His clients there have included Mark Meadows and the Georgia Republican Party.
And there are, of course, many more former Tymkovich clerks who he might recommend for his seat. The question is: Was his semi-retirement tied to one of them getting nominated? And was the nomination of his former clerk, Katie Lane, part of this as well?
I raise these questions as Trump now, very suddenly, has three more circuit court vacancies to fill — and as we await, potentially, even more.