President Barack Obama on Monday nominated ^[1] the Justice Department’s Principal Deputy Solicitor General to serve on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.

Srikanth “Sri” Srinivasan, the chief deputy to the Solicitor General, and Caitlin Halligan, general counsel for the New York County District Attorney’s Office, were both nominated to the federal bench.

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Sri Srinivasan

From 1995 to 1996, Srinivasan served as a law clerk on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, and then spent a year as a Bristow Fellow in the Office of the Solicitor General before clerking for Sandra Day O’Connor during the Supreme Court’s 1997-1998 term. Srinivasan was hired as an associate at  O’Melveny & Myers LLP from 1998 until 2002.

In 2002, he returned to the Solicitor General’s Office as an Assistant to the Solicitor General.  He left the government in 2007 and rejoined O’Melveny & Myers as a partner. Then, in August 2011, he came back to the Office of the Solicitor General as the principal deputy.

Srinivasan received his B.A. from Stanford University in 1989 and his J.D. from Stanford Law School in 1995.  He also holds an M.B.A. from the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Obama called ^[1] Srinivasan a “trailblazer,” saying he “will serve the court with distinction and excellence.”

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Caitlin Halligan

Halligan is General Counsel for the New York County District Attorney’s Office.  She was an associate at Wiley, Rein, & Fielding LLP in Washington, D.C. from 1996 to 1997, and at Howard, Smith & Levin LLP in New York in 1998.  In 1999, Ms. Halligan joined the Office of the New York State Attorney General.

In 2001 Halligan became the First Deputy Solicitor General of New York and later that year was appointed Solicitor General of New York State.  She has worked as an adjunct faculty member at Columbia Law School since 2005, serving from 2007 to 2009 as pro bono counsel to the board of Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, the entity overseeing the rebuilding of Lower Manhattan following the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Halligan received her undergraduate degree from Princeton University in 1988 and her J.D. from Georgetown University in 1995.

Obama urged reconsideration of Halligan’s nomination after the confirmation was blocked ^[4] in the Senate last year: “I remain deeply disappointed that a minority of the United States Senate blocked Ms. Halligan’s nomination last year and urge her reconsideration, especially given her broad bipartisan support from the legal and law enforcement communities.”