Biden to nominate Sunil Harjani to federal bench in Chicago

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WASHINGTON — The White House announced on Wednesday that President Joe Biden intends to nominate a federal magistrate serving in Chicago to a judgeship in the Northern District of Illinois, as Biden’s push to diversify the judiciary continues.

Biden will tap Sunil Harjani, who has been a U.S. magistrate judge for the Northern District since 2019.

If confirmed, Harjani, who is Indian American, will further the goal of Biden and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin, D-Ill., to diversify the federal bench. Since the Northern District was created about 200 years ago, it has been dominated by white male judges.

Biden’s newest judicial picks, the White House said, “continue to fulfill the President’s promise to ensure that the nation’s courts reflect the diversity that is one of our greatest assets as a country — both in terms of personal and professional backgrounds.”

Harjani is a former Chicago-based assistant U.S. attorney who was deputy chief of the securities and commodities fraud section, serving from 2008 to 2019.

Before that, he was a senior counsel at the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission from 2004 to 2008. Harjani was in private practice at the law firm of Jenner & Block LLP in Chicago from 2000 to 2001 and 2002 to 2004.

He graduated from Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law in 2000. His received his undergraduate degree in 1997 from Northwestern University.

According to his biography posted on the Northern District website, while a federal prosecutor, Harjani “tried numerous securities and commodities matters, and other complex fraud cases to verdict in this district, as well as argued multiple appeals on behalf of the United States before the Seventh Circuit.”

As an adjunct professor at Northwestern Law School, he taught white collar criminal practice and federal civil discovery classes.  He is also an advisory board member for the South Asian Bar Association of Chicago.