Gordon P. Gallagher is Colorado’s newest federal trial judge after the U.S. Senate voted 53-43 to confirm him to the state’s seven-member U.S. District Court on Wednesday.

Gallagher is the first appointee to the district court since 1989 to live on the Western Slope. The court has not announced whether Gallagher will remain in Grand Junction or whether he will relocate to Denver, where the other district judges hear cases.

“My hope is that they allow him to be located in Grand Junction, continue to live in Grand Junction and to travel to Denver as needed,” said Mesa County District Attorney Daniel P. Rubinstein, who supported Gallagher’s nomination. “He is a great human and this community would benefit from not only a full-time (district) judge, but one that is truly committed to Western Colorado.”

Gallagher has been a part-time magistrate judge on the federal court since 2012. Magistrate judges tend to focus on preliminary and administrative matters in cases, but they are empowered to handle most of the same tasks as the presidentially-appointed district judges.

Gallagher is one of a handful of magistrate judges whose chambers are located outside of Denver. Since 2014, he has supervised the intake division for cases filed by people representing themselves, including lawsuits from prisoners. He estimated the cases account for one-third of all civil matters filed in Colorado’s federal court.

At the same time as his judicial service, Gallagher also represented the criminally accused in state courts. He has litigated more than 275 trials in total and would become one of few defense attorneys to join the federal bench.

Little over two years into President Joe Biden’s administration, he has now appointed four of the seven active district judges on Colorado’s federal trial court. Biden’s previous appointees were three women who represented various “firsts” for the court, including Nina Y. Wang, the first magistrate judge in Colorado’s history to be elevated to a district judgeship. Gallagher is now the second.

Gallagher will succeed William J. Martínez, a Barack Obama appointee who took a form of semi-retirement known as “senior status” last month. However, a fifth vacancy is looming on the horizon, as Raymond P. Moore, also an Obama appointee, will take senior status in three months.

On the same day as Gallagher’s confirmation, U.S. Magistrate Judge S. Kato Crews appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee to testify about his nomination to Moore’s seat.

Last year, U.S. Sens. John Hickenlooper and Michael Bennet employed a committee to screen applicants and recommend finalists to the White House. Gallagher, Crews and corporate litigator Sundeep K. “Rob” Addy made the senators’ shortlist.

Following Gallagher’s nomination, he received several letters of support from the Western Slope community, including from one of the two federally-recognized tribal nations in southwest Colorado.

“Gallagher has demonstrated that he is sensitive to the needs of the Tribal Members and will strive to consider those values in forming his perspective,” wrote Chairman Manuel Heart of the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe.

Although the Biden administration has been relatively quick to fill vacancies in Colorado, where both senators are Democrats, progressive groups have urged a change to the Senate tradition of “blue slips,” whereby Republican senators can block the president’s district court nominees in their states. So far, blue slips remain intact.

The Republican senators who voted with Democrats to confirm Gallagher were Chuck Grassley of Iowa, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Susan Collins of Maine, Thom Tillis of North Carolina and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska.