Draft:Sarah F. Russell

Sarah French Russell (born 1976) is an American lawyer and academic who is a nominee to serve as a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the District of Connecticut.

Education
Russell received a Bachelor of Arts from Yale College in 1998 and a Juris Doctor from Yale Law School in 2002.

Career
From 2002 to 2003, she served as a law clerk for Chief Judge Michael Mukasey on the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York and for Judge Chester J. Straub on the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit from 2003 to 2005. From 2005 to 2007, Russell was an assistant federal defender in the Office of the Federal Public Defender for the District of Connecticut. From 2007 to 2010, she was a lecturer in law and director of the Arthur Liman Public Interest Program at Yale Law School, where she taught criminal defense, prison legal services, and Supreme Court advocacy clinics. Since 2011, she has been a law professor and director of the Civil Justice Clinic at Quinnipiac University School of Law.

Nomination to district court
On October 4, 2023, President Joe Biden nominated Russell to serve as a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the District of Connecticut. President Biden nominated Russell to the seat vacated by Judge Sarah A. L. Merriam, who was elevated to the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit on September 28, 2022. On November 1, 2023, a hearing on her nomination was held before the Senate Judiciary Committee. During her confirmation hearing, she was questioned over a letter she had signed in March 2020 urging Connecticut's governor to free people from the state's prisons and declare a moratorium on incarcerating anyone else due to COVID-19. Russell did not include the letter in background materials she compiled for the committee. On November 30, 2023, her nomination was favorably reported out of committee by a party line 11–10 vote. On January 3, 2024, her nomination was returned to the president under Rule XXXI, Paragraph 6 of the United States Senate and she was renominated on January 8, 2024. On January 18, 2024, her nomination was favorably reported out of committee by an 11–10 party-line vote. Her nomination is pending before the United States Senate.