Biden appointed more federal judges than Trump did in his first term, new research shows

President-elect Trump appointed three Supreme Court justices during his first White House term, significantly reshaping the nation’s top court. But President Biden appointed more federal judges than Trump in the past four years.

According to fresh data from the Federal Judiciary Center, Biden is slated to end his tenure having installed 228 judges to U.S. district and appellate courts, including record numbers of female and minority judges to district courts across the country. 

That total was aided in part by a flurry of eleventh-hour confirmations by Senate Democrats, who scrambled to approve Biden’s judicial nominees last month in the final days of the 118th Congress and while they still held a narrow majority in the chamber.

Trump appointed 226 federal and appellate court judges during his first White House term, just under Biden’s total.

Biden also placed one justice on the Supreme Court, Ketanji Brown Jackson, the first Black woman on the nation’s highest court.

Sixty percent of the judges appointed by Biden are Black, Hispanic, Asian or part of another racial or ethnic minority group, according to data compiled by the Pew Research Center, the highest percentage for any U.S. president. 

Biden’s federal judge appointments, both in their diversity and scope, bear similarities to another single-term Democratic president, Jimmy Carter.

Unlike Biden, Carter did not appoint anyone to the Supreme Court. But he appointed more than 260 federal and appellate court judges during his four years in office, including record numbers of women and minority judges, helping the courts better reflect the populations they represented. The appointments helped reshape the federal bench and paved the way for women and minorities to serve on the Supreme Court.

Most notably, Carter is credited with installing Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, a decision that set her up later for promotion when Democratic President Clinton tapped her for the nation’s highest court in 1993.