US Senate confirms Sheria Clarke as latest federal judge for SC

The US Senate voted Tuesday 52-38 to confirm Sheria Clarke as South Carolina’s newest federal judge.

An African-American, the 44-year-old Clarke adds diversity to the state’s federal bench, which will now have three Black judges out of the 10 current judges. She currently lives in Greenville and works for Nelson Mullins law firm, where she is a partner.

Federal judges are lifetime posts and the current salary is approximately $250,000 +a year. They preside over many of South Carolina’s major federal civil and criminal trials, including the 2016-17 death penalty trial of white supremacist Dylann Roof and the multiyear prosecution of top officials at SCANA, a former major state utility that no longer exists because of mismanagement in the construction of nuclear reactors by two of the company’s top officials. They were sent to prison.

“She could be sworn in today,” said University of Richmond Law School professor Carl Tobias, an authority on the federal judiciary.

However, before she can begin hearing cases, she must first receive a formal commission by U.S. mail, Tobias said. And new judges attend a special school, dubbed “Baby Judge School,” where they learn the ropes of being a federal judge, he said.

Tobias said Clarke appears well qualified and has attracted some scattered support from a few Democratic senators along the way after she was nominated by President Donald Trump in February.

Although Clarke gets high marks for her experience, good sense and temperament, she joined dozens of other federal judicial candidates nominated this year by Trump in refusing to acknowledge that Joe Biden won the popular vote in the 2020 election during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in March.

For more than five years, Trump has continued to falsely claim without evidence that Democratic fraud stole the 2020 election, despite numerous recounts and audits and court cases that proved otherwise. Trump’s own attorney general, William Barr, said in December 2020 that no substantial evidence of fraud existed.

To secure a nomination for a judge’s post from Trump, a candidate like Clarke has to be able to deny, or at least sidestep, the reality that Biden won the 2020 election, according to legal expert Jeffrey Toobin.

Biden won the 2020 popular vote with 81.2 million votes, or 51%, compared with Trump’s 74.2 million votes, or 46.8%, according to a 2022 Federal Elections Commission report. Biden won the 2020 electoral vote by 306-232, the commission report said.

At her March Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Clarke was asked by Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Connecticut, “Mrs. Clarke, who won the 2020 election?”

Clarke dodged the question and began to explain to Blumenthal how presidents are elected. “Senator, under our Constitution, the mechanism for electing a president—“

Blumenthal, who had just heard a similar answer from another Trump nominee who declined to say who won the 2020 election, interrupted Clarke, saying “I am amazed. I am just amazed by the insult to this committee of witness after witness who seeks to be a federal judge subverting our Constitution and showing how you have no independence, which is essential to a federal judge.”

Blumenthal then went on to criticize the answers that Clarke and three other Trump judicial nominees gave about the 2020 election, saying those answers were “Orwellian in their denial of reality, and they are a subversion of this process. They are an insult to this committee, but they also fundamentally show a complete lack of independence and backbone and impartiality — which are the fundamental requirements of a U.S. District Court judge or a judge on any panel.”

Tobias speculated that Clarke and others who won’t acknowledge that Trump didn’t win the 2020 election are worried about angering him. “The nominees are worried that Trump will withdraw their nomination or something, or he’ll take some kind of retribution. They don’t want to make him mad. It sheds some kind of bad light on him if they said he lost.”

Sheria Clarke’s journey

Clarke said in a written response to the Judiciary Committee’s questions that she began seeking a federal judge’s post in November 2024, when she contacted U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham’s staff and met with one of his aides.

In October 2025, she met with Sen. Tim Scott at his Washington office to discuss becoming a federal judge. “During our meeting, Sen. Scott asked if I would like to be considered for the vacant U.S. District Judge position in the District of South Carolina,” she wrote.

Since then, she has been in contact with White House and Department of Justice officials to discuss the nomination. On Feb. 9, Trump called her to say he would be nominating her, Clarke wrote.

Another high-profile supporter is former Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., who installed Clarke as a top staffer on his Select Committee on the 2012 Terrorist Attack in Benghazi, where she worked from 2014 to 2016. Clarke also taught classes with Gowdy at Wofford College from 2020 to 2023 on subjects like criminal justice, due process, Congress and political parties.

Much of Clarke’s experience has been in Washington as a lawyer for various committees from 2009 to 2019.

In addition to the Benghazi Committee, she served as lawyer for the majority on the House Committee on Ethics and staff director for the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

Born in Virginia, Clarke graduated from Liberty University in 2003 and the University of North Carolina Law School in 2006. She spent three years as a law clerk with two different judges on the N.C. Court of Appeals.

In 2019 Clarke began living in South Carolina and become a member of the state Bar. From that year to 2021, she worked at Nelson Mullins, followed by a three-year stint as an assistant U.S. Attorney in Greenville. In 2024, she returned to Nelson Mullins.

Graham said Tuesday that Clarke was confirmed with a bipartisan vote and “is exactly the kind of person who should be a federal judge. ... I am fully confident that Judge Clarke will apply the law fairly to all South Carolinians.“

Clarke has “extraordinary credentials, an impeccable character and a deep commitment to the rule of law,” Graham said.