Diane Gujarati, a prosecutor with decades of experience in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, was confirmed unanimously by the US Senate on September 10th as the newest district judge in the Eastern District of New York.
Gujarati, an Indian American prosecutor with decades of experience in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, by a vote 99-0 in favor of confirming Gujarati. The Senate Judiciary Committee on June 27 had advanced the nomination of Gujarati for the post.
Initially announced last May as President Donald Trump’s 14th wave of judicial nominees, the slate of nominees cleared the Judiciary Committee in September but did not receive a confirmation vote in the full Senate before the end of the last Congress.
Trump re-nominated the prospective judges in April. Gujarati, of New York, is the daughter of an Indian father and Jewish mother. The attorney has been nominated by the president to serve as a district judge on the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York.
Gujarati is deputy chief of the criminal division of the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, where she has served as an assistant United States attorney for the past 19 years.
She has also served as an adjunct professor of clinical law at New York University School of Law until earlier this year.
Before joining the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Gujarati practiced for three years as a litigation associate in the New York City office of Davis Polk & Wardwell, LLP, her bio notes.
Upon graduation from law school, Gujarati served as a law clerk to Judge John M. Walker Jr. of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.
Gujarati had previously been nominated by former President Barack Obama to the same post for which Trump nominated her for April 8.
Obama, at the time, said, “I am pleased to nominate Diane Gujarati to serve on the United States District Court bench,” said Obama (see India-West article here: https://bit.ly/2WXQZtj). “I am confident she will serve the American people with distinction.”
The Indian American’s nomination from Obama expired in early 2017 and then Trump in May 2018 nominated her again for the same post. The seat for which Gujarati has been nominated covers parts of the city as well the suburbs on Long Island.
The nomination by Trump shows both her legal standing as well as the administration’s difficulty in finding candidates within its ideological spectrum who will be able to win Senate support, according to a news release at the time of Trump’s initial nomination.
Three vacancies remain in the Eastern District following Gujarati’s confirmation, and all have active nominees, according to Law.com. The nominees are Hector Gonzalez, a partner at Dechert; Saritha Komatireddy, deputy chief of general crimes in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York; and David C. Woll Jr., a principal deputy assistant secretary for community planning and development in the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
