President Joe Biden on Wednesday selected U.S. Magistrate Judge Nina Y. Wang to fill an upcoming vacancy on Colorado’s federal trial court.

If the U.S. Senate confirms her, Wang would fill a vacancy occurring on July 15, when U.S. District Court Judge Christine M. Arguello takes a form of semi-retirement known as senior status. Colorado’s two senators recommended Wang and two other candidates for the seat in October.

“She’s an experienced federal magistrate judge and has been with the court many years,” Chief Judge Timothy M. Tymkovich of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit told Colorado Politics shortly after the announcement. “She’s helped me with planning our judicial conferences over the years and she has a really nice background for a district court judge. I wish her well in the confirmation process.

Wang has served as a magistrate judge since 2015. Magistrate judges are hired by the court and assist the presidentially-appointed district court judges with a range of matters, including handling cases on their own. Although she is not the first magistrate judge to be nominated for a lifetime appointment in Colorado, if confirmed she would be the first magistrate judge to take a seat on the seven-member trial court.

An immigrant from Taiwan, Wang attended Washington University in St. Louis and Harvard Law School. She worked as an assistant U.S. attorney in Colorado and was an intellectual property attorney at the firm now known as Faegre Drinker prior to her appointment as magistrate judge. She is also a former president of the Asian Pacific American Bar Association of Colorado.

In a statement, the current president of the bar association, Clark Yeh, said that Wang “has a long history of serving the community” and that the Senate should confirm her promptly.

Early in her career, Wang was a clerk for Peter J. Messitte, now a senior U.S. District Court judge in Maryland.

“She wrote well, she was personable – all of the good things that you want in a law clerk, in a lawyer, in a magistrate judge and a judge. She’s got all of the qualities,” said Messitte. “The one thing I remember about her: when I hired her, one of the professors who recommended her wrote me a letter and every other line was in capital letters with exclamation points. I’d never gotten one like that. She’s a capital-letter woman with exclamation points!”

Messitte added that Wang would be his first former clerk to be nominated as a federal district court judge, and he was “delighted for Colorado.”

Wang is Biden’s fourth judicial nominee in Colorado and his third to the trial court. U.S. District Court Judge Regina M. Rodriguez and Judge Veronica S. Rossman of the 10th Circuit have already taken their seats on the bench.

Charlotte N. Sweeney, a workers’ rights attorney, has an upcoming vote in the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary this Thursday. If Wang and Sweeney are confirmed, Biden will have appointed as many women to Colorado’s U.S. District Court in his first two years as all previous presidents combined.