Egardo Ramos (Day Pitney)

Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) is recommending a former and a current Department of Justice official for two seats on the federal district court in Manhattan.

Edgardo Ramos is a former Assistant U.S. Attorney in the U.S. Attorney’s office for the Eastern District of New York. He is now a partner at Day Pitney LLP in the firm’s white collar defense and investigations and antitrust practices. In 2009, Connecticut’s two senators, Christopher Dodd (D) and Joseph Lieberman (I) recommended him as one of four candidates to be Connecticut U.S. Attorney, but the White House nominated New Haven lawyer David Fein, who was confirmed.

Katherine Forrest (Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP

Schumer also recommended Katherine Forrest to fill a vacancy on the court. She is a deputy assistant attorney general in the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division. Before she joined the Justice Department in October, Forrest was at Cravath, Swaine & Moore for 20 years, where she focused on antitrust and intellectual property matters  Forrest was on the team of Cravath lawyers that helped United Airlines win antitrust approval for its merger with Continental Airlines Inc.

Schumer is sending his recommendation of Ramos and Forrest to President Barack Obama for potential nomination to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. Schumer called the two “first-rate lawyers who have served at the highest levels of public and private practice,” the the Blog of Legal Times reported Wednesday.

The Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts says the district is in a “judicial emergency” because of seven vacancies. Obama has made other nominations for the court: J. Paul Oetken, a senior vice president an associate general counsel at Cablevision Systems Corp., and Vincent Briccetti of Briccetti, Calhoun & Lawrence in White Plains, N.Y.

President Barack Obama nominated former Justice Department official J. Paul Oetken for the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, the White House announced on Wednesday.

Currently a senior vice president and associate general counsel of Cablevision Systems Corporation, Oetken previously worked as an associate at the Debevoise & Plimpton and Jenner & Block law firms.

Oetken served in the White House Counsel’s Office as Associate Counsel to the President,  and from 1997 to 1999 he was an attorney-advisor with DOJ in the Office of Legal Counsel.

He served as a law clerk for Associate U.S. Supreme Court Justice Harry A. Blackmun and for Judges Louis F. Oberdorfer of U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia and Richard D. Cudahy of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit.

Oetken received his J.D. from Yale Law School and his undergraduate degree from the University of Iowa. His is the third nomination of an openly gay official in the Obama administration.

Richard Hartunian (DOJ)

A family tragedy set Richard Hartunian on his path to becoming a U.S. Attorney, The Syracuse Post-Standard reports. In 1988, Hartunian’s parents got the news that their daughter had been killed in the terrorist bombing of Pan Am Flight 103.

Lynne Hartunian, then a student at the State University of New York at Oswego, was returning from a study-abroad program in Europe, the newspaper reports. At the time, 27-year-old Richard Hartunian, who last week won Senate confirmation to be the new U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of New York, was a new lawyer doing mostly real estate closings.

His mother, Joanne Hartunian, was paralyzed by the news and stayed on the couch for days. Her son brought her food and worked on taking care of the family. “I kind of had to kick into gear,” he told The Post-Standard.

In addition to supporting his family, this included becoming a leader the Pan Am 103 victims group, according to the newspaper. Hartunian was one of the seven original members of the group that lobbied for a presidential commission on security at airports and called for additional investigations from the U.S. and British governments, the newspaper reports. Even though he was only three years out of law school, Hartunian was the legal adviser to the group.

Joanne told The Post-Standard that it was this experience as a crime victim and advocate for others that helped the attorney realize he wanted to be a federal prosecutor.  “The only thing he ever said, and this was a long time ago, was that after being a victim he had decided that he wanted to be a prosecutor,” she said.  Hartunian became a federal prosecutor in 1997.

Before the bombing, Hartunian had hoped to become an assistant district attorney in Albany County, N.Y., which he eventually did for seven years. However, the aftermath of the bombing educated him not only about the power of the federal government but the need to be compassionate toward victims, according to the newspaper. Among the issues Hartunian dealt with were getting death certificates from Scotland, having personal property returned and the identification of the remains.

Although the bombing was a turning point in his life, Hartunian did not want it to overshadow other aspects of his life. “You don’t want to be defined by those events alone,” he told The Post-Standard. “They were an important chapter in my life that steered me, that had impact on me, that taught me a lot about myself, about faith, about family and the importance of living life to its fullest every day.”

Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) (flickr)

Allan Lengel, over at ticklethewire.com, brought to our attention this news release from the office of Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.). Yesterday, Schumer announced he is recommending former federal prosecutor Daniel Alter for a judgeship on the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.

Alter, who was an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Southern District, “is a history-making pick, as he is the first openly gay male nominated for the federal court in American history,” Schumer’s release said. (According to our friends over at Above the Law, Judge Deborah Batts, also of New York’s Southern District, is the only openly lesbian federal judge.)

Alter (Columbia, Yale Law) spent six years as an AUSA, specializing in First Amendment matters. He is also an expert on terrorism and national security, having worked on al-Qaeda cases and on the prosecution team for the African embassy bombing trials, the release said.

Here’s what Schumer had to say about Alter:

His outstanding leadership skills, his commitment to justice, and his extensive experience make him an exceptional choice for a position on the federal bench.  I’m proud to nominate Daniel Alter. Period. But I am equally proud to nominate him because he is a history-maker who will be the first openly gay male judge in American history.

It should be noted that President Obama nominated an openly lesbian magistrate judge — Marisa Demeo –  for a spot on the D.C. Superior Court. (Judges on the District’s local bench are nominated by the president and require Senate confirmation.)

The National Law Journal’s David Ingram reported here [registration required] that Demeo’s nomination has dragged on eight months — longer than any of Obama’s other judicial picks, including his most controversial nominees for federal appellate courts. 

Typically, Superior Court nominations chug through the Senate, but Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) told Ingram that he is holding up Demeo’s nomination in his role as chairman of the Senate Steering Committee, a caucus of conservative senators.

“A number of Republicans had concerns and asked me, as chairman of Steering, to ask for limited debate and a recorded vote because of a history of very leftist activism,” he said.

DeMint declined to discuss specific criticisms when pressed by Ingram.

“There are just a number of things that don’t look like a fair and balanced approach that you’d like in a judge,” he said.

Former Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey on Tuesday during a radio interview with The Washington Times joked that Rep. James Moran (D-Va.) “ought to get professional help, perhaps from Maj. Nidal [Hasan],” the accused Fort Hood shooter, The Huffington Post reports.

Last week, Moran criticized opponents of Attorney General Eric Holder’s decision to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his Sept. 11, 2001, co-defendants in the Southern District of New York, Talking Points Memo reported. “They see this as an opportunity to demagogue,” Moran told TPM. “They will seize on any opportunity to do that, and that means they’ll even take a stand that’s un-American.” He added, “It’s un-American to hold anyone indefinitely without trial. It’s against our principles as a nation.”

During his interview, Mukasay was asked to respond to Moran’s comments. “I think he’s lost touch with reality. He ought to get professional help, perhaps from Maj. Nidal.” Last week, Mukasey slammedthe decision to try Mohammed in New York City.

Former Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey on Friday criticized the Obama administration’s decision to prosecute a group of terrorism suspects accused in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in federal court, warning of safety risks to Americans and the possibility that national security information could be aired in civilian proceedings.

His speech to the conservative Federalist Society — of which he is a member — came hours after Attorney General Eric Holder announced that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the self-proclaimed “mastermind” of the attacks, and four other men accused in the plot would face charges in the Southern District of New York.

Mukasey, echoing concerns he outlined in a recent piece in The Wall Street Journal, said granting the suspects access to civilian courts would present a “cornucopia [of intelligence] for those still at large and a circus for those in custody.”

Mukasey, who supports trying terrorism suspects in military commissions at Guantanamo, said KSM will be “a virtually totemic figure” in prison, potentially radicalizing others. Mukasey said he wasn’t worried about the suspects breaking free but feared holding them in New York would make the city a renewed target for attack.

The question is whether the city will become the focus of new “mischief in the form of murder,” said Mukasey, who presided over the 1995 trial in New York of the “blind sheik” Omar Abdel Rahman, who was implicated in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and convicted for plotting to blow up New York City landmarks.

At a news conference Friday, Holder said the Justice Department “has a long, successful history of prosecuting terrorists for their crimes against our nation, particularly in New York.”

He went on:

Although these cases can often be complex and challenging, federal prosecutors have successfully met these challenges and have convicted a number of terrorists who are now serving lengthy sentences in our prisons. And although the security issues presented by terrorism cases should never be minimized, our marshals, court security officers, and prison officials have extensive experience and training dealing with dangerous defendants, and I am confident they can meet the security challenges posed by this case.

Mukasey spent much of his speech lashing out at the Obama administration for reversing national securtiy policies under President George W. Bush, but he credited his successor for leaving intact intelligence-gathering methods used by the FBI and for continuing to deploy the controversial state stecrets privilege.

Mukasey, Bush’s third Attorney General, was introduced by Gerald Walpin,  the former inspector general for the Corporation for National and Community Service.

President Barack Obama fired Walpin this summer, amid a federal probe into whether he overstepped his authority while investigating a Sacramento-based non-profit foundation. Walpin was recently cleared of wrongdoing, and has asked to be reinstated. His firing has become a rallying cry for conservatives who accuse the Obama administration of removing Walpin for political reasons.

Mukasey said Walpin was “unceremoniously” and “unlawfully” removed.

Click here for a video of the panel on C-SPAN.

This post has been updated.