April 7, 2004 – Delegate Donna M. Christensen is scheduled to introduce President Bush's nominee for judge of the District Court on St. Thomas at a U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Thursday.
The hearing, in the Senate Dirksen Building, is to be broadcast live via the Internet on Thursday, beginning at 10 a.m.. The Virgin Islands nominee, Assistant U.S. Attorney Curtis V. Gomez, is one of four persons to be questioned by the committee as part of the nomination process to the federal judiciary.
Following the hearing, Gomez is expected to win approval from the Judiciary Committee in a vote scheduled for April 22, according to congressional sources who spoke on condition of anonymity Wednesday. The nomination would then go to the full Senate for a confirmation vote.
Gomez, 40, a native Crucian, would replace District Judge Thomas K. Moore, who has held the position since being nominated by then-President George H.W. Bush and confirmed by the Senate in 1992. Moore refused to comment on why he is being replaced, and members of his staff also declined comment.
Christensen said she is satisfied with the current president's selection of Gomez, although she is sorry to see Moore leave the bench. "I continued supporting him until it was a lost cause," she said of Moore on Tuesday evening.
Gomez's nominated was announced late last year.
After becoming an assistant U.S. Attorney for the Virgin Islands seven years ago, he moved to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Virginia, then returned in 2002 to the St. Thomas office. Earlier, he was an associate with the law firm of Patton Boggs in Washington, D.C., and then with the St. Thomas firm of Dudley Topper and Feuerzeig.
He is a graduate of Harvard Law School and George Washington University and was valedictorian of the Charlotte Amalie High School Class of 1981.
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