A Dublin-born attorney has said she is both excited and relieved after President Bush nominated her as a federal judge in Washington DC, writes Sean O'Driscoll in New York.
Ms Jennifer M. Anderson (45), from Killester in north Dublin city, is set to serve a 15-year term as a Superior Court judge if her nomination is approved by the Senate.
She is currently chief of the homicide and major crimes section of the US attorney's office in Washington. In the late 1990s she was a special prosecutor in the civil rights division of the Justice Department.
"The new position will be interesting. I've been doing my current job for 14 years, so it's really going to be a change," she said yesterday. Her family emigrated when she was eight years old after her father answered an advert for factory workers placed in an Irish newspaper. "He didn't tell my mother that he had applied but she came around to the idea," she said.
Ms Anderson, a former student at St Bridget's primary school in Killester, said that her parents, who live in Baltimore, Maryland, were more excited about the appointment than she was.
She was one of three people shortlisted for the position.