Trump nominates Maine litigator Joshua Dunlap for First Circuit court

By Nate Raymond and Christian Martinez

(Reuters) -U.S. President Donald Trump said on Wednesday he is nominating a Maine litigator and a former clerk to a pair of conservative U.S. Supreme Court justices to serve as life-tenured judges on two federal appeals courts.

Trump in posts on his social media platform Truth Social said he is nominating Joshua Dunlap to join the Boston-based 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and Eric Tung to serve on the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

The two picks to serve as life-tenured judges brought to 14 the number of judicial nominees announced by Trump in his second term. Trump has now nominated four appeals court judges, as he looks to add to the 234 judicial appointments in his first term in office.

Dunlap, a Maine-based lawyer at the law firm Pierce Atwood, has been nominated to fill the lone vacancy on the Boston-based 1st Circuit, which currently is the only one of the 13 appeals courts with no active judges appointed by Republican presidents.

Former President Joe Biden had sought to fill the vacancy and solidify a six-judge court with only Democratic-appointed judges, but did not secure confirmation of his nominee, Julia Lipez, before he left office.

The New England trial courts that sit below the 1st Circuit have become a popular venue for litigants seeking to challenge Trump's agenda, and the 1st Circuit has in several instances rejected his administration's requests to halt injunctions blocking key parts of his agenda.

"We need more TOUGH and SMART Judges on the Federal Bench, who fearlessly defend our Constitution, and Joshua will do just do that," Trump wrote.

Tung, a Los Angeles-based partner at the law firm Jones Day, has previously served as a federal prosecutor and held positions at the U.S. Department of Justice. He previously clerked for Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch as well as Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who died in 2016.

"Eric is a Tough Patriot, who will uphold the Rule of Law in the most RADICAL, Leftist States like California, Oregon, and Washington," Trump wrote, citing three states that are within the jurisdiction of the 9th Circuit.

(Reporting by Nate Raymond and Christian Martinez; Editing by Lincoln Feast and Christopher Cushing)