The US Senate has approved the historic appointment of Judge Zahid Qureshi, becoming the first lifelong Muslim US federal judge in the country's history.
Qureshi, who is of Pakistani descent, won bipartisan support from the Senate, where 81 members voted for his appointment to 16 against.
President Joe Biden announced Qureshi's nomination as one of his first list of candidates to fill 11 federal judicial positions, last March.
Upon his nomination, the White House announced that Qureshi served as a federal prosecutor in the New Jersey attorney general's office from 2008 to 2013.
Before joining the attorney general's office, he worked as an assistant to the senior advisor to the Department of Homeland Security, and also served in the US Army, where he worked as a military prosecutor, and went to Iraq in 2004 and 2006.
Qureshi has served since 2019 as a judge in the New Jersey District Court.
Bloomberg reported that Qureshi had been nominated by former President Barack Obama for the same position;
But the Republican-led Senate did not act on it, after he blocked his candidacy, Republican Senator Mitch McConnell.
Qureshi is the third candidate for President Joe Biden in the field of justice, approved by the Senate.
The same three were previously nominated by Obama.
Qureshi's father immigrated to New York from Pakistan in 1970, opened a medical clinic, and continued to work there until his death due to complications from the Corona virus in April 2020.
Qureshi graduated from Rutgers University School of Law in New Jersey.
Other candidates on Biden's list include 3 black women, the first Asian American woman to serve in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, and the first woman of color to serve as a federal judge in Maryland.