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President Obama Nominates Two Norton Recommendations for U.S. District Court Judges

April 28, 2016

WASHINGTON, D.C.—Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) today called Todd Edelman and Florence Pan to inform them that President Obama would nominate them to become judges on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, as recommended by Norton. Edelman and Pan both currently serve as Associate Judges on the Superior Court for the District of Columbia.

“Todd Edelman and Florence Pan bring the kind of professional experience, academic credentials, and leadership qualities that will enable them to be outstanding judges on our district court,” Norton said. “I look forward to working with my friends in the Senate to have their nominations expeditiously confirmed in committee and on the Senate floor.”

Edelman is a graduate of Yale University, cum laude, and New York University School of Law, cum laude, where he was a Root-Tilden Scholar. He clerked for Judge William Bryant, U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. After clerking, Edelman was awarded an E. Barrett Prettyman Fellowship at the Georgetown University (GU) Law Center’s Criminal Justice Clinic. After his fellowship, Edelman worked at the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia (PDS) for eight years, rising to become Chief of the Serious Felony Section and the Training Director for attorneys. Edelman then became Of Counsel at Bredhoff and Kaiser, P.L.L.C. for three years, where he represented plaintiffs and defendants in complex civil and criminal litigation in state and federal courts nationwide, including labor, RICO, and employment cases, as well as in congressional investigations. Edelman was then appointed a full-time Visiting Associate Professor of Law at GU Law Center in the Criminal Justice Clinic for two years, where he co-taught a clinical education course on trials, supervised students who represented indigent defendants in criminal cases and defended serious felony cases. Since July 2010, Edelman has been an Associate Judge on the Superior Court, where he has served in the Civil Division, the Domestic Violence Unit and the Felony Branch of the Criminal Division. Since 2014, Edelman has been an Adjunct Professor of Law, which he also served as from 2004-2008, at the GU Law Center, teaching constitutional law in the International Legal Studies LL.M. program.

Pan graduated from the University of Pennsylvania, summa cum laude, with two undergraduate degrees, including from the Wharton School, and from Stanford Law School, with distinction, where she was an Associate Editor, Stanford Law Review, and student body president. She clerked for Judge Michael Mukasey, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, and Judge Ralph Winter, Jr., U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. After her clerkships, Pan joined the U.S. Department of Justice, where she served as a Bristow Fellow in the Office of the Solicitor General for a year and then as an attorney in the Criminal Division, Appellate Section. She then worked at the U.S. Department of the Treasury as a senior advisor to the Undersecretary for Domestic Finance, where she worked on financial policy. For the next 10 years, she worked in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia. She served five years as an Assistant U.S. Attorney, working in both the federal and local trial courts here, and then in the appellate division, serving her last two years as the deputy chief of the division. Since 2009, Pan has been an Associate Judge on the Superior Court, where she has served in the Family Courts and Criminal Division. Pan has served as an adjunct professor of law at both the American University College of Law (2007-2008), where she taught criminal procedure, and since 2012 at GU Law Center, where she teaches criminal procedure and constitutional law to L.L.M candidates.

President Obama, like President Clinton, granted Norton senatorial courtesy to recommend candidates for federal district court judges and other important federal law enforcement officials in the District. Norton recommended Edelman and Pan from a number of candidates screened by her Federal Law Enforcement Nominating Commission, chaired by Pauline Schneider, a special counsel at Ballard Spahr LLP and a former president of the D.C. Bar. President Obama has nominated and the Senate has confirmed all ten of Norton’s recommendations for district court judges—Amit Mehta, Ketanji Brown Jackson, Amy Berman Jackson, James E. Boasberg, Rudolph Contreras, Beryl A. Howell, Casey Cooper, Tanya Chutkan, Randolph Moss, and Robert Wilkins, who was the first of Norton’s recommendations to President Obama for a vacancy on the district court and who has since been elevated to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.