Gordon P. Gallagher first joined Colorado’s federal trial court in 2012 as a part-time magistrate judge stationed in Grand Junction. In March 2023, the U.S. Senate confirmed him to a lifetime appointment as a district judge — one of five Biden administration appointees to the state’s U.S. District Court.

Gallagher became the first district judge in Colorado’s history to be stationed outside of Denver. He continues to sit in Grand Junction, while occasionally traveling to Durango and Denver to preside over cases.

During a recent visit to Denver, Gallagher spoke to Colorado Politics about how he draws his civil caseload from across Colorado to prevent “judge-shopping,” his confirmation process and the challenges currently facing the federal judiciary.

Colorado Politics: My first question has to do with how you assemble your caseload. You are the first district judge to sit on the Western Slope. If I filed an excessive force lawsuit against the Grand Junction police, are you my trial judge? Or if I got indicted for a criminal offense somewhere on the Western Slope, are you automatically the judge in that case?

Gordon Gallagher: The answer is a little bit of both. We divide the criminal caseload into different dockets. When Chief Judge (Marcia) Krieger was the chief judge, she started what’s called the “Western Slope protocol.” The idea behind that was there are really good reasons why criminal dockets should be addressed much closer in proximity to where they are.

Take the Durango or southwestern corner docket. A lot of that comprises cases that come off of Indian land. Many of those are crimes against persons that have victims — sex assault cases, domestic violence cases. Those individuals, particularly in certain stages of the cases, if they wanted to participate, they had to come to Denver. Often, those were individuals who don’t have a lot of resources. Or on the defendants’ side, they want to have their family and friends participate, they want access to witnesses.

Judge Krieger created the Western Slope protocol with the idea that cases that happen there stay there. Before I started, it was happening with different district judges who were coming from Denver on a regular basis to Grand Junction to cover that docket or to Durango.

Basically, the western side of the state has two criminal dockets, but I’ve got both. I think as a court, we’ve been comfortable for a decade that that doesn’t create any impropriety in judge-shopping because the crime happened there; I just happen to be the judge hearing those cases.

Civil, we do very differently. We do identify, as a court, cases in certain parts of the state that may affect how they’re handled logistically or maybe where a trial might be. But all of the judges are in the draw randomly for all our civil cases. That means I have no greater percentage of Western Slope civil cases than anybody else.

That was on purpose. The court didn’t want to create a division of one. That sets up exactly the judge-shopping circumstance we see in other parts of the country, where a potential litigant could — if they believed for some philosophical reason or historical reason a judge might decide in their favor — civil litigants in certain types of cases have a greater ability to choose where they’re gonna litigate.

Other cases, not so much. A sexual harassment case in the workplace — and the workplace happens to be in Grand Junction — if we set up a division system, you’re not gonna file that in Pueblo or Fort Collins. It happened where it happened. But many cases we deal with in federal court aren’t that type of case.

CP: Just to define for non-lawyer readers: “Divisions” are when there is a federal judicial district and there’s a main courthouse and then a satellite courthouse with one or two judges. And cases geographically proximate to there are filed in that division. And “judge-shopping” is when someone maybe purposefully finds a reason to bring a case in that division.

Gallagher: Congress establishes judicial districts. Some states have multiple judicial districts. Colorado is a unified district; what that means is you have one clerk’s office, one chief judge, but you can have different judges sitting in different divisions.

Colorado has different divisions, mostly for purposes of grand juries — really not as much related to the location of where cases go. The federal court system is, by its nature, a somewhat disparate system and a somewhat combined system. I know that’s contradictory, but the disparate system is districts are given significant freedom to decide how they want to do their business.

Districts could set it up so a judicial division has a limited number of judges and cases have to go there based off of filing. Or they could do it like Colorado, where they have divisions and people sit in different areas, but cases are drawn randomly.

The administrative office (of the judiciary) has clearly expressed that they want to find ways across the country to limit litigants believing that they can pick who their judge is going to be by picking a specific district or division. Not getting into my perspective on whether that’s a good idea or not — clearly, we’ve seen there’s been pushback on that by certain politicians and different districts and courts in the county that don’t want to do that.

Our court has decided not to have a circumstance where there isn’t a random draw in civil cases. I think that’s a good idea. I think the idea of judicial independence goes along with randomly choosing who your judge is going to be. That’s been the right fit for Colorado.

CP: Can you think of any argument in favor of allowing you to be the single-judge, Western Slope division for our court?

Gallagher: I guess if you had certain cases where if you wanted absolute consistency across that type of case, I think that’s a good reason in criminal cases to have that. Civil cases are all just so very different. I just don’t think there are good reasons that judge-shopping should be the favored mechanism. In fact, I think it should be a disfavored mechanism.

This is not to cast aspersion against any particular political group because lots of political groups do it. I think it was mentioned yesterday (May 15) in the oral arguments having to do with nationwide injunctions. I think one Supreme Court justice commented on, in one administration, there’s a division or district in Texas that’s been picked for many cases and in another administration, there’s a district in California that’s been picked.

It happens on both sides. In a world where there’s often distrust of government and of judges, I think anything we can do to have more fairness in the system is the right way to do it.

I guess looking at it differently: You can have judges that specialize in certain things. You can have a judge that’s the Social Security judge, a judge that’s the employment discrimination judge. And if you did that, you would probably get more consistency across orders by having a process set up like that. I don’t think that’s the right way to do it. If we take those cases randomly, society can see you spin the wheel and take your chance. You don’t know what judge you’re gonna get. And we have a little more faith in the system because of that.

CP: In other words, you don’t want to be in the business of developing Western Slope-specific case law in civil cases?

Gallagher: Sometimes that comes up. I had one case when I was a magistrate judge. Essentially, it was an attorney fees case and the counsel who represented one of the litigants was from the Western Slope, I think from a smaller community in the Western Slope, and a big-city attorney pushed back on the attorney fee request saying, “No, they shouldn’t get that much. They’re a small-town attorney living in small community. They aren’t as good. They aren’t as specialized.”

My order was the opposite. Like, no, you’re all practicing in federal court. Maybe you’re practicing from New York City and he’s practicing from Delta, Colorado, but that doesn’t necessarily represent a lack of expertise. In fact, he won, not you.

So, am I interested in how the law develops as it relates to the Western Slope? Absolutely. But I think all of the judges should be interested in how the law develops with respect to the entirety of this district.

CP: During your nomination, the senators and some of your endorsement letters emphasized the importance of having someone from the Western Slope sitting on the district court. A year or two in, what have been the effects of having you be part of the court, that you can perceive?

Gallagher: Judges have multiple different hats that we wear. One is obviously the caseload hat. The other is, we jointly, led by our chief judge, run an administrative system. This is a big state. I know 4–4.5 million in this state live in relatively close proximity to the metro area. But half a million to a million people don’t. I think in the meetings and discussions that we have, having those different perspectives — there’s lots of different types of diversity out there.

That’s also one of the reasons that, not only did I think it was important to have somebody from the Western Slope on the court, but to keep me on the Western Slope. Because that perspective can change over time if you move to Denver or move to Washington, D.C. You’re associating on a daily basis with different groups of people.

In terms of how that drills down to specifics, I gave a CLE (continuing legal education presentation) in Grand Junction five or six years ago where we tried to calculate purely the economic benefit to Western Slope attorneys in civil cases by keeping those cases there. It’s clearly in the millions in terms of those attorneys who would be from firms that may not appear in federal court and are now doing so. Which also means they’re getting an expertise in that. It’s valuable for their clients.

It’s meant security, government officials, marshals, court staff, just people who are living on the Western Slope in jobs being able to have those jobs there. I think it’s multi-faceted.

In one case, it was out of the Gunnison area, there were some issues with travel with some litigants in the case. I knew the state court judge in Gunnison and called him up and said, “Could I borrow your courtroom for half an hour? We want to hold court here.” That relationship allowed that to occur and we held court in Gunnison so we could try to get the litigants into court. We went to them. I think some of those gestures can be small but can be meaningful.

CP: Going back to your nomination and Senate confirmation process, is there anything particularly favorable or unfavorable that you remember about that?

Gallagher: It goes on too long! Personally, I feel like I had a relatively smooth ride. But it’s still excruciatingly long. Looking back at it, I think my wife had a good perspective on it — that it is long, it has input from lots of different stakeholders and it seems painful from this perspective, but there’s probably a good purpose that maybe you don’t see in the moment.

It’s a lifetime appointment. It’s not one where the public gets to weigh in and say that we don’t like this judge, we’re gonna vote him out of office. So, there needs to be significant involvement and buy-in from large constituent groups across the swath of people who care about who’s a federal judge. If you’re gonna give somebody a job for the rest of their career, you want to be as certain as you can that you’re making the right choice.

CP: When you say it goes on too long, what the rest of us saw was that Colorado’s senators had a committee to help them screen applicants. The committee forwarded names. The senators forwarded names to the White House. The White House nominated someone. You appeared before the Senate. Answered some additional questions. They took a vote in committee. Took a vote in the full Senate. And then you became a judge. Was there more to it than that?

Gallagher: Every White House does it differently, so I can’t speak to the process with any other White House. But the way the Biden White House did it was they notified the candidate a number of months before the actual nomination occurs. And the reason for that was, I think, an attempt to avoid screw-ups. They didn’t want to nominate somebody then undergo a lengthy background check and find out there was some kind of problem.

So, I think my nomination actually became official approximately end of August, beginning of September 2022. And I was confirmed and received my commission end of March 2023. What’s that process, about seven months? Thinking back, I think I was actually told I was under consideration approximately 4-5 months before that. So, you actually really start the process almost half a year before it gets publicly released. Because that’s when they started doing the vetting, the FBI checking.

My process was a little bit weird because, as you know, our court had a number of vacancies in a row and we kind of had this rolling process. So, I kind of had an extra year of doing it beforehand just because I’d applied multiple times or had my application continued. Maybe it seemed to me to be longer than it really was because I went through it multiple times in the lead-up to it.

CP: Would you get updates from Colorado’s senators about “Here’s what we’re hearing” or about your prospects?

Gallagher: I don’t know if this is true from administration to administration, but it seemed in large part once the senators handed the matter off to the White House, in some large respects the senators were no more in or out of the loop than the nominee was. That the White House basically took it from there. They were great. Both senators’ offices were wonderful to communicate with. But they often didn’t know more than I did. Which was often nothing at all. Sometimes you’re waiting and seeing for months and months.

CP: You mentioned earlier the importance of having the support of the local constituencies where you’re sitting. You had the support of tribal leadership in your nomination. Can you talk to me about your experience, before becoming a district judge and since, of working specifically with the tribes?

Gallagher: Our magistrate judge now in the Durango area is James Candelaria. He was the office head for the U.S. Attorney’s Office there. The constituencies on both tribes are fairly small. There’s between 1,500 and 2,000 tribal residents of each of the reservations there. Not surprisingly, he had a significant number of recusals, particularly in his first couple of years on the bench.

The way we’ve set it up in the state is the magistrate judges here (Denver) cover for and help each other, and the Western Slope magistrate judges do the same out there. So, when Judge Candelaria had a significant number of recusals, I suddenly had a bunch of cases in Durango. Because of the nature of the Western Slope protocol, the magistrate judges of the Western Slope do significantly more on those cases than the magistrate judges here. I found it fascinating and interesting.

In the background, I had a cousin who probably for at least a decade, he and his wife were doctors working for Indian Health Service on Zuni Reservation. So, I spent a fair amount of time visiting the reservation in Zuni, visiting my cousin and family over the years and was personally fascinated by southwest culture.

I found the docket very interesting and also very sad and disheartening because of the social issues and resource issues related to the Western Slope and the tribal area. I tried to work on rehabilitative resources, what we can do in terms of maybe different ways of imagining reentry, working with tribal leaders and the court that they have on the tribes.

There’s lots that we need to do down there. Some of it’s not within the purview of the court. We don’t provide, in the same way, budgets for rehabilitative resources, for example. Bureau of Prisons pays for reentry centers. Reentry in Colorado for somebody coming out of the Bureau of Prisons and going into supervised release happens on the Front Range, which is an extraordinarily different culture and hundreds of miles away for the tribal members.

It creates a real Catch-22 where somebody might get out of prison, be living in a reentry center or halfway house, they got a job, maybe things are going well, but they want to go home. Their family is there, their contacts are there, their tribal land is there — and they’re in a position of there isn’t a reentry center on the Western Slope.

We don’t get to open a reentry center. That’s got to be done by the Bureau of Prisons.

CP: Does that require involvement from state leadership or the local congressional representatives?

Gallagher: Certainly at the federal congressional level, and I know both Sen. (Michael) Bennet and Sen. (John) Hickenlooper’s offices have worked on it and encouraged that to occur.

I’ve met with Sen. Bennet’s person on the Western Slope as well as Sen. Hickenlooper’s and the senators themselves. They certainly seem invested in that area and wanting to work on it. Resources are finite, and right now we’re in a circumstance where resources are becoming more scarce in certain areas.

CP: Between your time as a magistrate judge and a district judge, what is different?

Gallagher: Well, there are certain things magistrate judges cannot do. They cannot try felony cases and they can’t conduct felony sentencing. That’s probably the big one. A huge portion of what district judges do is felony sentences. Perhaps the hardest part, at least emotionally, for most of us is deciding how long to send people to prison. That’s not always intellectually difficult — although sometimes very intellectually difficult — but always emotionally difficult.

One detriment I had as a part-time magistrate judge is I still had a law practice. So, it was wonderful to put that aside and have one focus. Doing both was extraordinarily difficult.

CP: I know you’re limited in what you can say, so I will try to ask this as broadly as possible. You obviously have seen the wave of litigation against the federal government. You’ve seen threats to impeach judges. You’ve seen a state judge arrested in the past couple of weeks. Is the feeling around the district court different lately, compared to what you experienced before?

Gallagher: I think the general feeling is we’re here to do our jobs. Your readers are smart. They know that judges have lives, have pasts. We come in with opinions about things that are happening in public and in our daily lives. But we’re gonna do what we’re expected to do, which is put those aside and decide things based on the facts and the law of the case. That’s the job.

We’re supposed to set aside those things. And when we can’t set them aside, we’re supposed to recuse. We’re supposed to be able to identify when something is too close to home and say, “This is a case I can’t take.”

One of the big reasons that I think the Founders gave (federal) judges lifetime tenure is we know that the winds of change in politics and crises are gonna ebb and flow over time. There are times that are easier, there are times that are harder. But we’re supposed to be able to set those aside and not let those affect us. Because we know if we make a decision that’s popular or unpopular today, that’s not supposed to affect our pay, it’s not supposed to affect our job. We’re supposed to make those decisions over time. And I think that’s constitutionally important.

CP: For people you interact with — maybe lawyers at legal events, people who recognize you in the community, people who come up to you at the supermarket — are they concerned for you? Are you getting anything different from them?

Gallagher: I’m in a smaller community. I’m still Gordon. Out there, except when I’m actually wearing the robe and sitting on the bench, I don’t actually want things to change. I really haven’t changed my lifestyle. I never really talked about politics or things of that nature before. So, I don’t now. It’s easy for me.

It’s also easy because I’ve been a magistrate judge for a decade and I had the same rules I have as a district judge, which is: I gotta keep my mouth shut and do my job and not talk about what we might think of as controversial political issues, except with my family and closest friends. I’ve had that habit for a decade. That’s made it easier for me.

I absolutely understand why there’s lots of concerns for judges around the country and I share those concerns. I can’t say I’m immune from those. But I hope they don’t hit close to home, either.

CP: You were part of the large amount of turnover that happened on the court during the Biden administration. And it seems like the membership of the court is pretty set for the foreseeable future. So, is there anything other than personnel changes that folks should be looking to, as far as initiatives or potential changes that are coming from the district court?

Gallagher: One thing that we continue to do is encourage people, if they think it’s appropriate, about consent jurisdiction for our magistrate judges. We have a great magistrate judge bench. I know it has had a significant turnover, as well, but we have a lot of smart, hardworking magistrate judges who would like to preside over those civil cases.

The court is always looking for new ways to serve the constituents — when appropriate — more efficiently. Although efficiency is not the master of everything and shouldn’t be.

I think the court will continue to find ways to be involved in the community and be relevant and do what we’re supposed to do, which is decide cases and controversies in a reasonable time.

We haven’t had a new judge (seat) now in 40 years. So, it doesn’t mean we’re operating with one hand tied behind our back. But the reality is we need more of us. We’re trying to get the work out the door as reasonably quickly as we can. And just know we’re here because we care.