Half of All Federal Judges Could Be Trump Appointees by End of His Next Term

President-elect Donald Trump notched a decisive victory in the election this week, and with a new Republican majority in the Senate, he is poised to reshape the federal judiciary in a way that could have ripple effects for generations.
Legal scholars say that when by the time Trump leaves office, half of all federal judges could be Trump appointees. He made history when he appointed 226 judges during his first term. As of the end of 2023, there were 860 authorized judgeships in the U.S., which means he would need to appoint just over 200 more to hit exactly half that number.
“Based on the number of judges currently eligible to retire, and those that will become eligible to retire during the next four years,” that’s “a possible outcome,” John P. Collins Jr., a professor at the George Washington University Law School, told Newsweek.
He added, however, that some judges eligible to retire were appointed by Democratic presidents, “and Trump won’t inherit as many vacancies as he did the first time around,” so “he may fall short. But I’m certain filling as many judgeships as possible will continue to be a priority.”
Outgoing Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has long said that filling the federal bench is his “top priority.”
“There are over 1,200 executive branch appointments that come to us for confirmation, and among the most important—in fact, I would argue, the most important—confirmations we have are lifetime appointments to the judiciary,” McConnell told NPR in 2018.
Trump set a record with his judicial nominations, appointing the highest number of federal judges through his fourth year in office than any president since Ronald Reagan. Trump appointed three of the U.S. Supreme Court’s nine justices, cementing a 6-3 conservative supermajority on the high court.
Trump touted those appointments throughout the 2024 campaign, and he took credit for the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, which overturned Roe v. Wade and rolled back the constitutional right to abortion.
“What I did is something—for 52 years they’ve been trying to get Roe v. Wade into the states,” he said during the September 10 presidential debate with Vice President Kamala Harris. “And through the genius and heart and strength of six Supreme Court justices, we were able to do that.”
The Supreme Court has delivered conservatives other victories as well, including rulings dismantling the administrative state, removing gun control regulations, and blurring the separation of church and state.
With Trump on the precipice of a second term in office, Senate Republicans and conservative activists are poised to move in lockstep with the president-elect as he fills as many judicial vacancies as he can.
“It’s a good time to let a younger, more bold, more fearless conservative judge take your place,” Mike Davis, a former Senate Republican aide who runs the conservative Article III Project, told Bloomberg News.
There will also almost certainly be renewed calls for Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor—who was appointed by President Barack Obama—to retire.
It’s not unusual for older Supreme Court justices to face calls to step down when control of the White House shifts from one party to another, including from members of the party that nominated them.
Conservatives pressured then-Justice Antonin Scalia to step down shortly before the 2000 election, and liberals pushed for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg to retire when Obama was near the end of his second term. Scalia died in February 2016 and Ginsburg died in September 2020, and both seats were filled with Trump appointees.