Loren AliKhan. Courtesy photo.

A group of Washington, D.C., legal figures are pushing a slate of potential nominees for President Donald Trump to tap for vacant seats on the D.C. Court of Appeals.

The D.C. Judicial Nomination Commission this week released its recommendations to fill the seats of Judges John Fisher and Kathryn Oberly on the court, which hears appeals from the D.C. Superior Court. Oberly retired from the bench in 2013, and Fisher announced last year that he will retire in August.

For Fisher's seat, the commission recommended Trump nominate Tovah Calderon, deputy chief in the appellate section of the DOJ's civil rights division, as well as Judge Anthony Epstein of the D.C. Superior Court and deputy chief of the appellate section of the DOJ's criminal division Vijay Shanker.

The commission recommended Oberly's seat be filled by D.C. Solicitor General Loren AliKhan, D.C. Administrative Law Judge John Howard III or Paul Wolfson, co-chair of Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr's appellate and U.S. Supreme Court litigation group. 

The judicial nomination commission, chaired by U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan of the District of Columbia, announced in December that it was soliciting applications for D.C. Court of Appeals vacancies, including a new search for nominees for the Obelry seat. The group said in February it received 21 applications for the vacancies.

>> Tovah Calderon has spent nearly two decades working on federal civil rights litigation for the DOJ at the appellate level and before the U.S. Supreme Court, and helps supervise the civil rights division's appellate program. She previously worked as the appellate section's special litigation counsel and as a line attorney, and clerked for Judges Francis Murnaghan and Andre Davis on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.

>> Vijay Shanker is currently on detail as senior litigation counsel for the criminal division's fraud section, where his work includes enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. He previously worked under the assistant attorney general in the DOJ's criminal division, and clerked for Judge Chester Straub on the Second Circuit.

>> Anthony Epstein was nominated by President George W. Bush to the D.C. Superior Court in 2007, and the Senate confirmed him in 2008. He was previously a partner for Steptoe & Johnson, and earlier worked for the Justice Department's antitrust division and the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Virginia.

>> Loren AliKhan recently argued on behalf of D.C. in its lawsuit with Maryland before the en banc Fourth Circuit, alleging Trump's D.C. hotel is in violation of the Constitution's emoluments clause. She joined the D.C. Attorney General's Office in 2013, and was named solicitor general in 2018. She was previously an appellate attorney for O'Melveny & Myers and clerked for Judge Thomas Ambro on the Third Circuit and U.S. District Judge Louis H. Pollak of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.

>> John Howard is an administrative law judge with the District of Columbia Office of Administrative Hearings, where he hears claims involving D.C. agencies. He was also a judge with the District of Columbia Commission on Human Rights, and previously practiced as an associate with Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld and as an independent practitioner. He is president of the D.C. Association of the Administrative Law Judiciary, and clerked for Judge David C. Simmons of the D.C. Commission on Human Rights and U.S. District Judge Alexander Williams Jr. of the District of Maryland.

>> Paul Wolfson has argued 21 times before the U.S. Supreme Court, and worked for the solicitor general's office for eight years before rejoining Wilmer in 2002. A member of the ABA Standing Committee on Federal Judicial, Wolfson also served two terms on the District of Columbia Board on Professional Responsibility. He clerked for Justice Byron White and Judge Phyllis Kravitch of the Eleventh Circuit.