WASHINGTON, D.C. — President Donald J. Trump announced his intent to nominate Justin R. Walker of Kentucky to serve as federal circuit judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, according to the White House Office of the Press Secretary.
Justin Walker currently serves as a U.S. District Judge for the Western District of Kentucky. Walker is also a part-time associate professor and co-director of the Ordered Liberty Program at the Brandeis School of Law at the University of Louisville.
Before taking the bench in 2019, Judge Walker was partner of counsel at Dinsmore & Shohl law firm in Louisville where his practice focused on commercial and appellate litigation. Previously, Walker was an appellate attorney in the Washington, D.C., office of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP.
Walker served as a law clerk to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy and to then-Judge Brett Kavanaugh of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
Walker earned his B.A., summa cum laude, from Duke University, and his J.D., magna cum laude, from Harvard Law School, where he served as Notes editor on the Harvard Law Review.
U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Louisville issued a  statement today regarding Walker’s nomination.
“Judge Justin Walker, the president’s choice to serve on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, is an outstanding legal scholar and a leading light in a new generation of federal judges,” McConnell states. “I am proud that President Trump’s search took him outside the Beltway and into the Bluegrass. He has chosen a rising Kentucky star, born and raised in Louisville, to refresh the second-most-important federal court in the country.”
McConnell described Walker as “a brilliant and fair jurist who reveres the Constitution and our nation’s founding principles. He understands the crucial but limited role that a judge must play in our constitutional order. I have known my fellow Kentuckian for a long time. The entire country will benefit from having this brilliant, principled, and fair-minded legal expert on this consequential bench.”
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