WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump on Tuesday nominated Judge Neil Gorsuch to the U.S. Supreme Court, a selection that gives the fourth-generation Coloradan a chance to become the state’s first high-court justice since Byron White retired in 1993.

Trump made the announcement during a prime-time address at the White House with the Colorado judge present. Gorsuch, a judge on the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver, beat out a slate of 20 other nominees Trump has floated in recent months. On hand was Maureen Scalia, widow of Justice Antonin Scalia, whom Gorsuch would replace.

“I’ve always felt that after the defense of our nation, the most important decision a president can make is the selection of a Supreme Court justice,” Trump said. “I’ve selected an individual whose qualities define, really and closely define, what we’re looking for: outstanding legal skill, a brilliant legal mind and discipline.”

Gorsuch took the podium with his wife, Louise, at his side.

“It is for Congress, not the courts, to write new laws. A judge who likes every outcome he reaches is likely a very bad judge,” Gorsuch said. Turning to Trump, he added: “You’ve trusted me with the most solemn assignment. I am acutely aware of my own imperfections.”

He referred to the U.S. Constitution as “the greatest charter the world has ever known” and the U.S. Senate as “the greatest deliberative body in the world.”

Though Gorsuch is well-regarded within Colorado’s legal community and nationally, he probably faces a tough confirmation battle in the U.S. Senate. Liberals immediately decried Gorsuch as an extreme choice while conservatives called him mainstream.

Democrats remain angry that congressional Republicans stalled for months — and ultimately stopped — the nomination of Merrick Garland, the pick that President Barack Obama put forward to replace Scalia, who died nearly a year ago.

The coming clash is certain to shine a spotlight on Michael Bennet, Colorado’s lone Democrat in the Senate. How much he opposes Gorsuch could be a telling indicator of overall Democratic resistance. A statement released Tuesday by a Bennet spokeswoman gave little away.

“As a fellow Coloradan, Michael congratulates Judge Gorsuch and his family. He takes seriously the Senate’s responsibility to advise and consent on Supreme Court nominations. He intends to review Judge Gorsuch’s record carefully in the coming weeks,” wrote Laurie Cipriano, his spokeswoman.

That contrasted with Bennet’s Republican counterpart, U.S. Sen. Cory Gardner, who was on hand at the White House to watch the announcement. Afterward he called Gorsuch a “man of the West” and said it was an “exciting day for Colorado and, more importantly, an exciting day for the country.”

Gardner said Gorsuch would be on Capitol Hill on Wednesday to begin meeting with senators. Gardner said “we’ll do everything we can” to get him confirmed.

“This is a judge who puts personal opinions aside and rules on the constitution,” said Gardner, who added he had not spoken with Bennet about the nomination.

Earlier this week, Gardner noted the last time Gorsuch appeared before the Senate — in 2006 when he was up for his current judicial post — he sailed through on a voice vote. “People felt so confident in him and his qualifications that they didn’t even require a recorded vote,” Gardner said.

Still, tensions in Washington remain high at the start of the Trump administration. Democrats have opposed several of Trump’s cabinet officials and executive orders — including a controversial travel ban that could come up when Gorsuch appears before the Senate.

Gorsuch is known as an “originalist” who interprets the Constitution and statutes as they were originally written.

“He is definitely conservative and arguably more conservative than Justice Scalia, who he will be replacing,” said Luis Toro, a spokesman for Courts Matter Colorado, an umbrella organization of advocacy groups that supported a hearing for Garland.

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Toro pointed to Gorsuch’s concurring opinion that questioned the Chevron doctrine that gives federal government agencies overarching power to interpret the law.

“What Judge Gorsuch would do is overrule that case and say it’s all up to the courts,” Toro said. “So that would really be shifting the balance of power toward the courts to throw out regulations that they disagree with based on their interpretation of a statute that is admittedly vague or ambiguous.”

Abortion-rights groups also have raised concerns, given Gorsuch’s past votes on cases dealing with health care and religion; NARAL Pro-Choice America on Tuesday asked its members to contact their lawmakers and urge them to oppose any nominee who would not uphold the landmark case Roe v. Wade.

While Gorsuch’s judicial record is relatively thin as it relates to abortion cases, he has written against euthanasia and assisted suicide, the latter of which Colorado legalized last November.

“All human beings are intrinsically valuable and the intentional taking of human life by private persons is always wrong,” he wrote in his 2006 book “The Future of Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia.”

Gorsuch’s decisions in two cases — Hobby Lobby and Little Sisters of the Poor — supported religious exemptions when it came to providing coverage for birth control, as required under the federal health care law.

Congressional Republicans and their allies are almost certain to rally around whomever Trump picks. The conservative Judicial Crisis Network has pledged to spend $10 million to defend whomever is the nominee.

Back in Colorado, several attorneys and acquaintances spoke favorably of his temperament and legal skills — not to mention his reputation as double-black diamond skier or the possibility Colorado could get its first Supreme Court justice since White, who died in 2002.

On Tuesday, Gorsuch called White, for whom he clerked early in his career, “the last Coloradan on the Supreme Court and the only justice to lead the NFL in rushing.”

In his 2006 confirmation hearing, Gorsuch avoided characterizing his judicial philosophy when asked.

“I resist pigeonholes. They aren’t terribly helpful,” he said. “People do unexpected things. Pigeonholes ignore gray areas in the law.”

Denver attorney Michael Burg said Gorsuch has issued 10th Circuit Court opinions both for and against his clients. Like other Supreme Court judges appointed by liberal or conservative presidents, Gorsuch isn’t always predictable, Burg said. At times, he has crossed over and given decisions considered liberal leaning.

“It’s hard to know with any certainty which way he’ll go in any particular case,” Burg said. “He is honest. I think he will do what he thinks is right.”

Only time will tell, whether his decisions will always please Trump, he said.

“I think he’s perfect,” said Jason Dunn, a former Colorado deputy attorney general who is now with the firm Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck.

“Intellectually, he’s as smart as they come,” he added, noting Gorsuch’s education at Columbia, Harvard and Oxford universities. “He’s cut from the same cloth as Justice Scalia — an intellectual giant and judge who can write in a way that’s approachable and readable.”

Peter Krumholz, an appellate attorney and partner at Hale Westfall in Denver who follows the 10th Circuit, said Gorsuch’s brilliance shows in his writing.

“He writes in a very elegant, but succinct and readable way. I think he’s a lot like Scalia, not in temperament, but in the sense that they are both craftsman of legal writing,” Krumholz said. “I think I would expect him to be very relatively soon regarded as one of the best craftsmen of judicial opinions on the court.”

One area where Gorsuch does differ from Scalia is the use of contractions in legal opinions. Scalia called them “vulgarizing,” but Gorsuch doesn’t mind an apostrophe or two.

Nor does he mind a nod the occasional nod to humor. He once quoted Groucho Marx in a 10th Circuit opinion: “One morning I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got into my pajamas I’ll never know.”

Gorsuch noted: “While the rules of English grammar often afford a valuable starting point to understanding a speaker’s meaning, they are violated so often by so many of us that they can hardly be safely relied upon as the end point of any analysis of the parties’ plain meaning,”

A former high school classmate of Gorsuch spoke warmly of him.

“He is very thoughtful,” said Tom Downey, 51, who ran Al Gore’s 2000 campaign in Colorado and is a partner at Ireland Stapleton Pryor & Pascoe. “He will certainly write an opinion that will upset people who did not vote for Donald Trump but it will be a very reasoned, well-thought-out legal opinion.”

Downey said he attended Georgetown Preparatory School with Gorsuch when Gorsuch’s family lived in the Washington area. Gorsuch’s mother, the late Anne Gorsuch Burford, was a political heavyweight in her own right — having served as Environmental Protection Agency director for the Reagan administration for 22 months after serving in Colorado’s legislature.

But Downey said Gorsuch never acted entitled.

“It would have been very easy for him to put on airs,” Downey said. But “he was always genuinely nice, genuinely humble.”

The two students acted together in the play “The Odd Couple” and Downey, a senior at the time, said Gorsuch, a sophomore, managed to avoid getting hazed or worse because he worked hard, knew his lines and got along well with the cast.

“He just had a good sense of humor and carried himself really well,” Downey said.

Gorsuch and Louise — a British woman he met at Oxford — and their two daughters live northeast of Boulder. They keep horses, chickens and goats on their 3-acre lot, and Gorsuch is known to spend his free time fly-fishing, hiking and rowing at Boulder Reservoir, the Boulder Daily Camera reported.

Denver Post staff writer Kirk Mitchell contributed to this report.