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Profiles of those put forward

President Obama speaks at the White House on Tuesday where he nominated, from left, Robert Wilkins, Cornelia Pillard and Patricia Ann Millet to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. (Associated Press)

President Barack Obama on Tuesday chose three well-regarded lawyers to fill three open seats on the District of Columbia Court of Appeals: U.S. District Judge Robert Wilkins, Georgetown law professor Cornelia Pillard and Supreme Court litigator Patricia Millett.

• Wilkins, 50, graduated from Harvard Law School in 1989, two years before Obama. In 1992, he was the lead plaintiff in a “racial profiling” suit against the Maryland state police that ended with a landmark settlement. Obama nominated him to be a federal district judge, and he was confirmed in 2010.

• Millett, 49, is an appellate specialist who has argued 32 cases in the Supreme Court, the second-highest total among female lawyers. In many of them she was representing the Justice Department as an assistant U.S. solicitor general.

• Pillard, 52, also worked as an assistant U.S. solicitor general at the Justice Department and spent five years as an attorney for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. As a member of the Georgetown faculty, she defended the constitutionality of the Family and Medical Leave Act against a challenge brought by state officials.