WASHINGTON (Legal Newsline) -- President Barack Obama's picks for four open spots on a Michigan federal court are in.
On Thursday, Obama nominated Miller Canfield partner Matthew Frederick Leitman, federal prosecutor Judith Ellen Levy, U.S. Magistrate Judge Laurie J. Michelson and Detroit-area Circuit Judge Linda Vivienne Parker to the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan.
If confirmed, Leitman will take over for Marianne O. Battani, who took senior status last June. Levy will take over for Nancy G. Edmunds, who assumed senior status last August. Michelson will take over for George Caram Steeh III, who assumed senior status in January. Parker will take over for Robert H. Cleland, who took senior status in February.
Leitman's principal practice areas at Miller Canfield include complex commercial litigation, criminal defense, and appellate litigation.
Levy is an assistant U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of Michigan and is the chief of the office's Civil Rights Unit.
Michelson has been a magistrate judge for the Eastern District of Michigan since February 2011.
Parker is a criminal division judge in Michigan's Third Judicial Circuit.
Obama announced a total of six nominees last week. The other two are: Vince Girdhari Chhabria, a deputy city attorney for the San Francisco Attorney's Office, and James Maxwell Moody Jr., who is a judge in Arkansas' Sixth Judicial Circuit.
Chhabria, if confirmed, will replace Susan Y. Illston on the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. Illston took senior status July 1.
Moody will replace Susan Webber Wright on the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas. Wright also is assuming senior status.
The nominees are the President's first federal court selections since June.
From Legal Newsline: Reach Jessica Karmasek by email at jessica@legalnewsline.com.