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By Emma Schwartz
Legal Times
02-05-2007

President George W. Bush is expected to nominate former White House insider Dabney Friedrich to fill the recently vacated seat on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, two sources familiar with the process say.

The White House is in the final stages of finalizing her nomination to replace Judge Gladys Kessler, who took senior status last month.

Friedrich, 39, was appointed to the U.S. Sentencing Commission in December. Before that she spent three years as an associate counsel in the White House, where she oversaw judicial nominations, including nominations for the Supreme Court.

A Yale Law School graduate, Friedrich began her career as a clerk on the District Court to now-Chief Judge Thomas Hogan. In 1994, she joined Latham & Watkins in San Diego. A year later she became a prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of California, where she worked with now-U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeffrey Taylor.

In 1998, she moved to the Eastern District of Virginia, where she served until 2002. That year, Friedrich was hired as a staffer for the Senate Judiciary Committee under Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah.

She is married to Matthew Friedrich, former Enron task force prosecutor and now counselor to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.