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Indiana’s two U.S. Attorney nominees have both taken an important step toward confirmation, with Tom Wheeler II and Adam Mildred each getting favorable votes from the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Mildred’s nomination got a 12-10 vote from the committee Thursday, while Wheeler advanced Oct. 9 by the same vote total.
Carl Tobias, a University of Richmond School of Law professor, said Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, strongly praised Mildred’s prosecutorial experience in the chair’s opening statement, with no other committee member speaking about the Indiana Northern District nominee. Mildred is a deputy prosecuting attorney in Allen County.
It’s unclear when next round of confirmation votes will be conducted in the full Senate, but they could still come this month.
“One is the (federal government) shutdown, but the Senate has been meeting so far,” Tobias said in an email to The Indiana Lawyer.
He said a major issue is when the Senate will have the next en bloc vote on executive nominees, a move where a committee or congressional chamber will agree to act concurrently on multiple measures.
Wheeler and Mildred were nominated by President Donald Trump in June to serve as Indiana’s Southern and Northern District U.S. Attorneys, respectively.
Both posts require U.S. Senate confirmation, and Wheeler has been serving as acting U.S. Attorney in the Southern District in the interim while his nomination has been pending.
Wheeler served as acting general counsel at the Department of Education and has also held federal roles as acting assistant attorney general for civil rights at the Department of Justice, senior adviser to the White House School Safety Commission and counsel to the Secretary of Education.
Mildred has years of prosecutorial experience and is the former chief deputy prosecutor in Noble County.
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