3 Selected for Federal Judgeships

President Clinton on Tuesday nominated Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Gary A. Feess for a seat on the federal bench.

The president also resubmitted the names of two judicial candidates from Southern California whose nominations expired last year without receiving Senate confirmation.

The holdover nominees are U.S. District Judge Richard A. Paez for a seat on the federal appeals court and U.S. Magistrate Virginia A. Phillips for a District Court judgeship.

Paez is one of several candidates whose nominations to the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has been under attack in the Republican-controlled Senate. He and the circuit court have been branded too liberal in conservative political quarters.

This is the third time Clinton has submitted Paez’s name to the Senate. In 1996, Congress adjourned before any action was taken. In 1998, Paez’s nomination went to the full Senate for a vote but was blocked by the Republican leadership.

Phillips’ nomination does not appear to be controversial. Her name was submitted last year too late for consideration.

A graduate of UC Berkeley’s Boalt Hall School of Law, she was in private practice and served as a Superior Court commissioner in Riverside before becoming a U.S. magistrate in 1995. If confirmed, she would preside at the federal court branch in Riverside.

Feess has been a Superior Court judge, sitting in Pomona, since his appointment in 1996 by then-Gov. Pete Wilson.

He made his mark in the legal community during two tours as a federal prosecutor in Los Angeles, trying complex fraud and political corruption cases and later working as second in command and interim head of the U.S. attorney’s office.

Feess also was deputy general counsel to the Christopher Commission, which investigated abuses in the Los Angeles Police Department after the beating of Rodney G. King.

Between his stints as a federal prosecutor, he was a litigation partner at the national firm of Jones, Day, Reavis & Pogue and at the Los Angeles firm of Quinn, Emanuel, Urquhart & Oliver.

In a letter to Clinton recommending Feess for a federal judgeship, Sen. Dianne Feinstein said that “his experience, his intelligence and the respect he has earned among his colleagues make him an ideal candidate.”

She also said he has strong bipartisan support, ranging from Los Angeles County Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke, a Democrat, to Thomas Malcolm, who chaired Republican Wilson’s judicial selection committee.

Feess graduated with honors from Ohio State University and UCLA Law School, where he was an editor of the law review and a member of the Order of the Coif.