Senate confirmation of the first openly gay judge last week could portend greater diversity on the federal bench, something President Barack Obama has made a priority.

The Senate voted last Monday, 80-13, to confirm J. Paul Oetken to serve as a federal district court judge in the Southern District of New York...

According to the White House, Obama has nominated three openly gay judges: Oetken, former White House associate counsel Alison Nathan to serve as a judge in the Southern District of New York and Edward DuMont, a partner at WilmerHale, to serve on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.

Obama has nominated half of the Asian-Americans on the federal bench, the White House said. They include the first Vietnamese-American to serve as federal judge, Jacqeuline Nyen, who serves in the Central District of California; the first Chinese-American woman to serve as federal judge, Dolly Gee, also of the Central District of California; and the first Korean-American woman to serve as federal judge, Lucy Koh, of the Northern District of California.

Obama has also nominated Arvo Mikkanen to be a judge in the Northern District of Oklahoma. If confirmed, Mikkanen would be the only Native American on the federal bench.

Obama increases number of female, minority judges

(CBS News)

President Barack Obama is moving at a historic pace to try to diversify the nation's federal judiciary: Nearly three of every four people he has gotten confirmed to the federal bench are women or minorities. He is the first president who hasn't selected a majority of white males for lifetime judgeships.

More than 70 percent of Obama's confirmed judicial nominees during his first two years were "non-traditional," or nominees who were not white males. That far exceeds the percentages in the two-term administrations of Bill Clinton (48.1 percent) and George W. Bush (32.9 percent), according to Sheldon Goldman, author of the authoritative book "Picking Federal Judges."

"It is an absolutely remarkable diversity achievement," said Goldman, a political science professor at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, who is only counting judges once, even if they fit more than one category.

The White House recently has been touting its efforts to diversify the federal bench during Obama's tenure, now approaching three years in office. ...

According to the Federal Judicial Center, there are 94 vacancies in the federal courts, with 55 nominees awaiting Senate action.