Michael Fitzgerald 1st openly gay U.S. judge in CA JUDICIARY

A Los Angeles attorney won Senate confirmation to the federal bench on Thursday and will become California's first openly gay federal judge.

President Obama nominated Michael Fitzgerald, a former federal prosecutor, in July to the U.S. District Court in Los Angeles. Obama has named three other gay men or lesbians to the bench, and two, Paul Oetken and Alison Nathan, both of New York, have been confirmed.

The nation's only other openly gay or lesbian federal judge is Deborah Batts of New York, appointed by President Bill Clinton in 1994. San Francisco's former chief federal judge, Vaughn Walker, confirmed media reports that he is gay after retiring from the bench in February 2011.

The Senate confirmed Fitzgerald on a 91-6 vote. All the opponents were Republicans, but no one spoke against the nomination. The Senate Judiciary Committee had endorsed Fitzgerald on a bipartisan vote in November.

"The federal bench in California will gain an extremely talented new judge as a result of today's historic vote," said Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., who recommended Fitzgerald to Obama.

Fitzgerald, 52, a UC Berkeley law school graduate, was a federal prosecutor in Los Angeles from 1988 to 1991 and has worked at private law firms since then. He has also been a lawyer for the Los Angeles Board of Police Commissioners and for a panel that investigated police wrongdoing.

The vote followed an agreement Wednesday between Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada and Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky that allowed confirmation votes on 14 of Obama's stalled judicial nominees over the next two months.

Those who have been cleared for votes include Jacqueline Nguyen, a Los Angeles federal judge nominated to the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco. But the agreement did not cover two other Ninth Circuit nominees, Andrew Hurwitz, now an Arizona Supreme Court justice, and Paul Watford, a Los Angeles attorney, and it's unclear whether Republicans will allow a floor vote on either of them before the November elections.