Reports: This Pa. Judge Is on Trump’s Shortlist for Supreme Court

L: President Donald Trump via Gage Skidmore (license) | R: Thomas Hardiman (Cliff Owen / AP Photo)

Pennsylvania Judge Thomas Hardiman is on President Donald Trump‘s shortlist for a U.S. Supreme Court nomination, according to several news outlets. 

Hardiman, 51, lives in Pittsburgh and is a conservative judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, which is based in Philadelphia. He would be filling the seat of the provocative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who died last February.

Hardiman is reportedly up against Judge Neil Gorsuch of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit and Judge William Pryor of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit.

President George W. Bush nominated Hardiman to the U.S. District Court in Pittsburgh in 2003, and in 2006, Hardiman was moved to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. Previously, he’d worked for firms like Skadden Arps and Reed Smith.

Hardiman attended Notre Dame University and the Georgetown University Law Center and was the first person in his family to go to college, according to CNN. Ian Millhiser of ThinkProgress called Hardiman “one of the more ideologically enigmatic names on Trump’s list.”

President Trump is expected to make his pick for Supreme Court next Thursday.

Former President Barack Obama nominated Democratic U.S. appeals court judge Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court in March – but Senate Republicans refused to consider the nomination.

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