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• Stroz Friedberg LLC

From left to right: Beryl A. Howell; Michael H. Simon; U.S Magistrate Judge Diana Saldaña; and Victoria F. Nourse.

President Barack Obama nominated four former federal prosecutors to positions on the federal bench Wednesday.

Beryl A. Howell is nominated to a seat on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. A member of the U.S. Sentencing Commission, Howell was Executive Managing Director and General Counsel of Stroz Friedberg LLC from 2003 to 2009. She previously served on the staff of the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary as a senior advisor to Chairman Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.). From 1987 to 1993, Howell was an Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, where she rose to the position of Deputy Chief of the Narcotics Section.

Obama nominated U.S. Magistrate Judge Diana Saldaña to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas. Before she became a magistrate judge, Saldaña was an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the district from 2001 to 2006. Before that, she served as a trial attorney at the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division from 1998 to 1999.

Michael H. Simon is nominated to a seat on the U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon. Simon, a partner at Perkins Coie LLP in the firm’s Portland office, previously served as a Trial Attorney at the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice.

Obama also nominated Victoria F. Nourse to be a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit. Nourse is a professor at the University of Wisconsin School of Law. She served as an assistant counsel to the Senate Committee to Investigate the Iran-Contra Affair in 1987, before joining the Justice Department on the Civil Appellate Staff. In 1990, she became Special Counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee, assisting then Chairman Joseph Biden (D-Del.) in crafting provisions of the Violence Against Women Act.