Senior status is a form of semi-retirement for judges. Presidents may name new full-time judges to fill their seats, and several other judges picked by Biden's Democratic predecessors have recently elected to take senior status.
U.S. Circuit Judge Theodore McKee, a Clinton appointee, in August became the first judge on the 3rd Circuit during Biden's tenure to announce he would take senior status. Biden has yet to nominate a judge to replace him. Ambro, 71, is one of six Democratic appointees among the 3rd Circuit's 13 active judges, which until Smith’s announcement had eight Republican appointees, and joined the court in 2000. The court hears appeals from New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware and the Virgin Islands.
Before joining the 3rd Circuit, he was a partner at Richards, Layton & Finger and a leading bankruptcy lawyer in Delaware, where he worked on some of the biggest corporate restructurings of the 1990s. As a judge, Ambro has authored many of the 3rd Circuit’s major bankruptcy rulings including ones related to the Chapter 11 cases of