Biden appointed more federal judges than Trump did in his first term, new research shows

That total was aided in part by a flurry of eleventh-hour confirmations by Senate Democrats, who scrambled to approve Biden's judicial nominees last month in the final days of the 118th Congress and while they still held a narrow majority in the chamber.

Biden also placed one justice on the Supreme Court, Ketanji Brown Jackson, the first Black woman on the nation's highest court.

Biden's federal judge appointments, both in their diversity and scope, bear similarities to another single-term Democratic president, Jimmy Carter.

Unlike Biden, Carter did not appoint anyone to the Supreme Court. But he appointed more than 260 federal and appellate court judges during his four years in office, including record numbers of women and minority judges, helping the courts better reflect the populations they represented. The appointments helped reshape the federal bench and paved the way for women and minorities to serve on the Supreme Court.