As President Joe Biden's term comes to an end, his impact on New Jersey's federal bench has been significant.

As Biden prepares to vacate the Oval Office, the District of New Jersey has its full complement of 17 judges, including 10 whom he selected.

The court's current status is a long way from where it was at the start of Biden's term, when the court had six vacancies and was mired in backlogs thanks to the judicial shortage and COVID-19.

The 10 judges Biden nominated are more diverse than the group they replaced. His nominees include four women, three Black judges, two Asian Americans and one Latina, while the previous occupants of those seats include two women, two Latinos and no Blacks or Asians. The Biden judges are also seen by some observers as competent but not particularly ideological.

U.S. District Judge Evelyn Padin. Photo: Diego M. Radzinschi/ALM

Litigators who have cases in the District of New Jersey say their experiences have changed over the past four years.

"I do find that getting court dates, once a matter is assigned to a judge, to be quicker than during COVID," said Joseph Rotella, a Newark criminal defense attorney who sometimes has federal cases.

U.S. District Judge Christine O'Hearn. Courtesy photo

"When you had a judicial shortage the way you had four or five years ago, there's only so many hours in a day that a person can work. And so cases were just not moving as fast as the litigants would want, not due to any lack of effort, but more so because of just a lack of resources," said Mark Makhail, a business litigator at McCarter & English in Newark. "Comparing that to now, you're getting a lot more of an active bench, a younger and invigorated bench that's really looking to move the cases along. I think that, to sound cliched, justice is being served a lot quicker."

Makhail served as a law clerk for former Chief U.S. District Judge Jose Linares, who is also at McCarter & English. He added that he's not knocking the previous group of judges who were replaced by the Biden picks. But with COVID-19 and judicial vacancies, that group was saddled with too many cases to be able to offer much individual attention, he said.

"Now that the caseload is a lot less because of the appointments, judges are more involved in your cases, and they're moving them along a lot quicker. And the litigants, not just the lawyers, but the actual clients we represent, who are ultimately coming to the court for help, are getting help, and they're getting it at a faster pace, and they're getting reasoned decisions at a much quicker rate," Makhail said.

U.S. District Judge Zahid Quraishi. Courtesy photo

Biden's nominees for New Jersey are Julien Neals, Zahid Quraishi, Christine O’Hearn, Karen Williams, Georgette Castner, Evelyn Padin, Michael Fabiarz, Robert Kirsch, Jamel Semper and Edward Kiel. Quraishi was the nation's first Muslim Article III judge and Kiel was New Jersey's first Korean-American District Court judge.

Observers say Biden's picks have come to the job with minimal ideological baggage, and have issued some rulings that might be ruled as left-leaning and others that are not.

Among the most-talked-about recent decisions from the District of New Jersey was Kim v. Hanlon, in which Quraishi last March voided an election custom known as "the line" in primary elections. Under the line, candidates backed by county political parties appear on the ballot in a single column, giving them more prominent placement and an edge over other candidates. U.S. Sen. Andy Kim, who was then a U.S. representative, brought the suit while running against Tammy Murphy, the wife of Gov. Phil Murphy, for the Democratic nomination for Senate.

Elimination of the line was popular with progressives, but court observers said Biden's picks for the District of New Jersey issued some other decisions that could not be seen as left-leaning. In November, Padin granted a preliminary injunction in favor of churches receiving taxpayer funding for preservation of historic religious buildings in The Mendham Methodist Church v. Morris County, New Jersey.

Ideology was likewise missing in Zanetich v. Wal-Mart Stores, a May 2023 decision by O'Hearn which said New Jersey's law barring employment discrimination on the basis of marijuana use does not contain a private right of action allowing employees to sue, and National Shooting Sports Foundation v. Platkin, a March 2023 ruling by Quraishi which granted a preliminary injunction against allowing New Jersey to sue the gun industry. That decision was later overturned by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.

At the start of Biden's term, U.S. Sen. Cory Booker, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, seemed to appreciate the perilous situation created by the six vacancies on New Jersey's federal bench, said Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond who studies the federal judicial nomination process.

Booker appears to have convinced Biden of the need for action, Tobias said.

The six vacancies developed because Trump, Booker and then-U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez were apparently deadlocked on nominees.

"There were substantial backlogs and there was real concern among the judges that they would take forever to catch up," Tobias said. "I think the senior judges were very helpful and probably did lots of overtime work they had not really signed up for. So I'm heartened by the fact that they've been able to move cases."