John Marck, left, and Arthur “Rob” Jones are judicial nominees for the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas.
The Senate Judiciary Committee voted Thursday to send two of President Donald Trump’s judicial nominees for the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas to the full Senate for a floor vote. If the Senate confirms their nominations as expected, it would likely go a long way toward resolving a backlog of cases in the district, which is headquartered in Houston.
The committee voted 12-10 along party lines to advance the nominations of Acting U.S. Attorney John Marck and Executive Assistant U.S. Attorney Arthur “Rob” Jones — both currently with the Office of the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Texas.
Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond who has been monitoring the process, said a floor vote on both men’s nominations could come as soon as next week.
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“They go out [next] Thursday for the Fourth [of July holiday] and then don’t return until July 13,” Tobias said. “So, I think there’s every chance that they could be confirmed before they leave on Thursday.”
Marck and Jones elicited significant pushback from Democratic members of the judiciary committee during their confirmation hearing. Both men responded to a question of the 2020 presidential election by saying that Democrat Joe Biden had been “certified” as the winner against the Republican Trump, who at the time was near the end of his first term as president and seeking reelection. Neither judicial nominee would say whether Biden had actually won. In response to a question about the subsequent attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, each said the matter was one of political controversy and it would violate Canon 5 of the Code of Conduct for United States Judges for them to respond.
Trump has claimed repeatedly and without evidence that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him and that he was the legitimate winner. Lawsuits challenging the results in multiple states were rejected by courts.
Trump repeated these claims before a crowd of people in Washington, D.C. on Jan. 6, 2021, shortly before they marched to the Capitol, stormed the building and temporarily disrupted the certification of Biden’s electoral victory.
Over the course of Biden’s term, more than 1,500 people were arrested and charged with federal crimes in connection with the attack on the Capitol. Trump pardoned nearly all of them after returning to office in 2025.
If Marck and Jones are confirmed by the full Senate, it would cut the number of vacancies on the bench of the Southern District to two. A third Trump nominee, Angela Colmenero, could be confirmed soon after. Tobias estimated that would cut the number of vacancies to their lowest level since at least the George W. Bush presidency.
“Unfortunately, the Texas senators have not been moving people very quickly when there is a vacancy in a Democratic administration,” Tobias said. “That happened with [Barack] Obama, so that Trump had many opportunities to fill those vacancies. I think then there were 10 or 12 … and then [in] Biden’s time, the senators were cooperating in the first couple years, but in the last couple years the vacancies became larger, and there wasn’t much activity.”
Tobias said each vacancy contributes to a slowdown in the processing of cases – chiefly civil suits, as federal law requires judges to prioritize criminal cases.
“Each judge carries 731 cases, which is nearly double the national average, in the Southern District,” Tobias said. “So, that’s a pretty telling statistic. And that makes them, of course, emergencies.”