The U.S. Senate Tuesday confirmed April M. Perry to be a federal district judge for the Northern District of Illinois.

The senators voted 51-44 in favor of Perry’s appointment to the federal bench, and at least two Republicans voted for Perry before the chamber adjourned just before 7 p.m.

U.S. Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin and U.S. Sen. Tammy Duckworth, both D-Illinois, applauded the confirmation.

“We are pleased that the United States Senate has confirmed April Perry to serve as a United States District Court Judge for the Northern District of Illinois,” Durbin and Duckworth said in a joint statement. “Ms. Perry brings strong qualifications and a wealth of experience to the bench. Ms. Perry was also found unanimously ‘Well Qualified’ by the American Bar Association.”

“Her experience and qualifications will strengthen our federal bench,” Durbin and Duckworth added, “and she will be ready to serve the Northern District on day one.”

President Joe Biden formally nominated Perry for the lifetime judicial appointment in July after Vice President-elect JD Vance, in his current job as Ohio’s junior U.S. senator, blocked Perry from becoming Chicago’s top federal prosecutor.

Biden in 2023 wanted Perry to become the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, but he withdrew the stalled nomination in July amid Vance’s procedural hold policy.

Vance, a Republican, objected to giving Perry a smooth U.S. attorney confirmation vote to protest what he described as a “Department of Justice that seems far more interested in politics than in justice.”

“We are rightfully concerned in this chamber, at least on my side of the aisle, about the weaponization of the Department of Justice,” Vance said in a committee hearing in September 2023, according to a release from his Senate office.

After the U.S. Senate confirmed Judge Nancy Maldonado to serve on the Chicago-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, Biden named Perry to serve in Maldonado’s former district court seat.

Perry from 2017 to 2019 served as chief ethics officer for the Cook County State’s Attorney. Since then she has worked as in-house counsel, most recently as senior counsel for global investigations at GE Healthcare, according to a White House statement on her nomination. She was an assistant U.S. attorney for 12 years.

Carl Tobias, a University of Richmond Law School professor who tracks federal judicial nominations, said he expected the U.S. Senate to “smoothly confirm April Perry on a strong bipartisan vote, because she is highly qualified and very experienced, and because the court has huge caseloads.”

With Perry’s confirmation Tuesday, the U.S. Senate to date has confirmed 214 of Biden’s judicial nominees, and the majority of these lifetime appointees are women or people of color.

President-elect Donald Trump in a Nov. 10 post on X said “no Judges should be approved during this period of time because the Democrats are looking to ram through their Judges as the Republicans fight over Leadership.”

A spokesperson for Durbin, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee, said confirming Biden's nominees in the lame-duck session is a priority for Senate Democrats.