Ada Brown will become the first black woman to serve on the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, after the U.S. Senate Wednesday voted 80-13 to confirm her nomination.

Brown declined to comment.

President Donald Trump nominated her in March to replace Judge Terry Means, who took senior status in 2013.

The Vetting Room, a blog about federal judicial nominees, wrote that Brown is the second African American woman that Trump has nominated to the federal bench.

Brown has been a justice on the Fifth Court of Appeals in Dallas since 2013, running as a Republican, and is one of the few African American appellate justices in Texas. Before taking that bench, she practiced at McKool Smith in Dallas, where she focused on commercial litigation and patent infringement cases.

Brown also has extensive criminal law experience, as she presided over Dallas County's Criminal Court No. 1 from 2005 to 2007, and served as a prosecutor in the Dallas County District Attorney's Office just out of law school. She also served as a commissioner for the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement Officer Standards and Education, and as a commissioner for the Texas Department of Public Safety. She earned her law degree from Emory University School of Law in 1999.

In a statement after the Senate Judiciary Committee voted to advance Brown's nomination to the full Senate, Sens. Ted Cruz and John Cornyn, Texas' Republican senators, praised Brown's years of public service as a prosecutor, her experience on the trial bench, and time on the appellate court.

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