The Biden administration has chosen U.S. Magistrate Judge S. Kato Crews to fill an upcoming vacancy on Colorado’s federal trial court, the president’s fifth nominee to the court in just two years.

Crews has been a magistrate judge for the U.S. District Court since 2018. Although magistrate judges tend to focus on preliminary and administrative matters in cases, they handle many of the same tasks as the life-tenured district judges, up to and including presiding over civil cases.

Marquiel Cade, a former law clerk for Crews, said Crews makes it a priority to understand the issues in cases and to communicate with the parties. Cade called Crews a mentor and someone he hopes to emulate as an African-American lawyer.

“He represents the beacon of what I hope to achieve in my own career and, at every turn, has been available for mentorship and guidance – not just in areas of the law, but in life,” Cade said. “This represents the type of person he is both on and off the bench.”

If confirmed, Crews will succeed U.S. District Court Judge Raymond P. Moore, a Barack Obama appointee who is scheduled in June to take a form of semi-retirement known as senior status. The White House selected Crews over Sundeep K. “Rob” Addy, a corporate litigator who recently helped investigate patterns of racially-biased policing in Aurora.

Colorado has seen remarkable turnover since 2021 on its federal trial court, which comprises seven active judges. President Joe Biden has already appointed three of its members, and a fourth nomination is pending in the U.S. Senate. Earlier this month, the Senate confirmed Biden’s 100th nominee in total.

Colorado’s two U.S. senators, Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper, formed a committee to screen candidates for most of the district court vacancies, a process that culminated in shortlists of attorneys recommended to the White House.

Crews is a graduate of the University of Arizona’s law school, where he worked with ExxonMobil’s legal department and participated in the school’s clinic for domestic violence law.

“If you looked at my resume you’d assume I was an individual who decided early on that I wanted to be a judge, and then patterned my path to achieve that goal,” he told the law school in 2019. “I’m certain that my in-depth community involvement was a high point for the District Judges who voted unanimously to appoint me. But I did those things because giving back was an integral part of my identity, not because I aspired to the bench.”

Prior to his appointment as a magistrate judge, Crews helped found a Greenwood Village-based law firm that handles business litigation and defends employers against civil lawsuits. Earlier in his career, he was an attorney in the U.S. National Labor Relations Board’s Denver office. 

Among the cases he has handled, Crews recommended allowing a wrongful arrest lawsuit to proceed against Mesa County’s top judge, declined to dismiss a professor’s disability discrimination lawsuit against the University of Colorado and scolded an Arapahoe County sheriff’s deputy for allegedly endangering a detainee by calling him “gay.” Crews also ordered a woman to comply with courthouse security’s “courtesy” questions as a condition of her entering the downtown Denver building.

Crews would be only the third magistrate judge appointed to a district court vacancy in Colorado. The first, Nina Y. Wang, was also a Biden appointee in 2022, and the second, Gordon P. Gallagher, is awaiting a confirmation vote from the full Senate.

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to clarify that Crews would be the third magistrate judge appointed to the district court in Colorado history.