[caption id="attachment_15414" align="alignnone" width="620"]
United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Photo: Jason Doiy/ALM.[/caption] As part of his latest wave of judicial nominations, President Donald Trump has tapped Eric Miller, the Seattle-based chair of the appellate practice at Perkins Coie, for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Miller, who worked on appeals at the Justice Department’s Civil Division and the Office of Legal Counsel during the George W. Bush administration, served in the U.S. Solicitor General’s Office from 2007 to 2012 prior to joining the firm. Miller, who clerked for Judge Laurence Silberman on the D.C. Circuit and Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, has argued more than 60 appeals, including 16 at the nation’s high court. Miller’s nomination comes the same week Trump announced D.C. Circuit Judge Brett Kavanaugh as his latest nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court and won Senate confirmation for Mark Bennett, the former Hawaii attorney general and first of the president’s Ninth Circuit nominees to pass through the full Senate. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell filed cloture Thursday on Trump’s other Ninth Circuit nominee, Oregon Assistant U.S. Attorney Ryan Bounds, meaning his nomination will get a full Senate vote next week. Bounds’ nomination narrowly passed out of the Senate Judiciary Committee last month in an 11-10 party-line vote after his nomination was opposed by his home-state Democratic senators. Also among the six judicial nominees announced Friday were three other big-firm lawyers tapped for the district court bench. Miller’s Perkins Coie partner, Kathleen O’Sullivan, the chair of the firm’s commercial litigation group, was put forward for a spot in the Western District of Washington. Prior to joining the firm, she held clerkships with Judge Harold H. Greene of the the District of Columbia and Judge M. Margaret McKeown of the Ninth Circuit. K&L Gates partner J. Nicholas Ranjan was nominated to serve in the Western District of Pennsylvania and Barnes & Thornburg partner Damon Leichty was nominated for the Northern District of Indiana.