Maritza Dominguez Braswell, a former corporate litigator and high-ranking official in the Colorado Attorney General’s Office, was formally sworn in on Friday as the lone federal judge stationed in Colorado Springs.

“It strikes me that we have formed a society that sometimes makes life difficult. For some, life is more difficult than for others – the marginalized, the disenfranchised,” she remarked at the Alfred A. Arraj U.S. Courthouse in downtown Denver. “But there are people who consistently go out of their way to make life better for others. I have been the beneficiary of those efforts.”

Dominguez Braswell officially started as a U.S. magistrate judge in early July, but her ceremonial swearing-in, known as an investiture, was an opportunity for her legal colleagues and family to describe the path that led her to the federal bench.

Her former boss, Attorney General Phil Weiser, said it was one of the best decisions he ever made to hire Dominguez Braswell as the head of the office’s civil litigation and employment law section following his 2018 election.

“It is a rare person who can bring the emotional intelligence, the self-confidence, self-awareness and judgment to have difficult and important conversations. We need more Maritzas,” Weiser said.

Colorado’s U.S. District Court has seven presidentially appointed, Senate-confirmed trial judges in active service, all of whom work out of courthouses in downtown Denver. There are also eight magistrate judges who assist with the work of the court.

Unlike their life-tenured counterparts, magistrate judges serve for fixed terms and go through a merit-selection process, with the district judges ultimately deciding who to hire. While magistrate judges tend to focus on more administrative and preliminary matters in cases, they perform most of the same functions as the district judges, up to and including presiding over civil jury trials.

Dominguez Braswell graduated from the University of Denver in 2002 and Rutgers Law School in 2008. From living on the East Coast, she returned to Colorado but still took on cases from the country’s financial center pertaining to mortgage-backed securities and the fallout from the 2008 recession.

“We were small, but we were scrappy,” said Michael Rollin, her former law partner. “Although we were a small group of lawyers from a place that New Yorkers call ‘flyover country,’ we were at home.”

After financial malfeasance caused the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the largest bankruptcy filing in U.S. history, Dominguez Braswell and Rollin helped represent the company against investors seeking $11.4 billion. The lawyers for Lehman Brothers prevailed, with a judge in Manhattan valuing the claims of the hedge funds and institutional investors at only $2.4 billion.

“You may not be surprised that Wall Street boardrooms are not the most inviting places in general. They’re not particularly inviting to women and people of color and especially women of color,” Rollin said. “Maritza had the room of all suits nodding along with her ideas and her strategy and ultimately following her direction. That’s what led to big trial wins.”

Following her career in private practice, Weiser selected her to lead the department responsible for defending state agencies, employees and institutions of higher learning in civil lawsuits.

Dwight Braswell, Dominguez Braswell’s husband, described their personal journey as high school sweethearts who got engaged at Casa Bonita, moved to New York City to pursue their careers and then returned to Colorado.

“She’s calculated, but she’s fearless. She’s tough, but she’s kind,” Braswell said. “She is giving, she is kind, she is loving and she is smart – a lot smarter than me. And that’s OK.”

Dominguez Braswell is the only full-time magistrate judge not located in Denver. She said being on her own made it difficult to “learn by osmosis,” but that the other magistrate judges had nevertheless helped her acclimate to the job. Although Dominguez Braswell was selected in January to succeed retiring U.S. Magistrate Judge Kathleen M. Tafoya, a delayed background check postponed her starting date by more than five months.

In the 94 federal judicial districts, being a magistrate judge can be a reliable path to becoming a presidentially appointed district judge. Historically, that has not been true in Colorado.

However, this year the Biden administration appointed longtime U.S. Magistrate Judge Nina Y. Wang to a district judge vacancy for the first time in history. A second magistrate judge, Gordon P. Gallagher, who works part-time in Grand Junction, is a nominee for another impending vacancy.

The federal court also has investitures scheduled for its two newest district judges: Charlotte N. Sweeney, whose ceremony will be later in October, and Wang, whose ceremony will be in December. Following Dominguez Braswell’s investiture was a reception at the federal appeals court across the street, paid for by the judge and her husband.