President Obama has nominated Lucy Koh, a Santa Clara County Superior Court

President Obama has nominated Lucy Koh, a Santa Clara County Superior Court judge, to the federal bench in San Jose. If confirmed, she would be the nation’s second Korean American federal judge.


Koh, 41, a Harvard law graduate, was a U.S. Justice Department attorney on legislative affairs for three years, a federal prosecutor in Los Angeles for three years and a lawyer with a Silicon Valley firm for six years before Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger appointed her to the county court in January 2008. Obama nominated her Wednesday.

She is the daughter of Korean immigrants. Her mother escaped North Korea after the 1945 division of Korea by walking south for two weeks while suffering from yellow fever, and her father fought against the Communists in the Korean War, then opposed a military dictatorship in South Korea and immigrated to the United States, according to the Asian American Justice Center, a civil rights group.

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