Former colleagues of one of President Donald Trump’s judicial nominees praise him as the “the most brilliant attorney” they’ve ever “had the opportunity to work with.”
Trump nominated Joshua Divine to the U.S. District Court for the Eastern and Western Districts of Missouri on May 6.
Divine serves as Missouri’s solicitor general, but his resume also includes clerking for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, working as general counsel for Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., and being an involved member of the conservative Federalist Society.
“He is an accomplished attorney with an incredible acumen for the law. He has an indisputable fidelity to the law, and so he will give the law its full faith and credit, and he will also look at the text, history, and tradition of the United States Constitution and determine constitutional issues,” Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey told The Daily Signal.
“There is no one in the United States of America more qualified to take the pitch than Josh Divine,” said. Bailey, who appointed Divine as his solicitor general in December 2022.
In his current role, Divine has led the fight to protect mothers and babies from the abortion pill and promulgated a rule to prevent children from undergoing irreversible transgender medical interventions.
Divine joined forces with counterparts in Idaho and Kansas to file a lawsuit against the Food and Drug Administration, arguing it should roll back its decision to allow telehealth prescriptions to mifepristone. The Trump Department of Justice dismissed the case, saying it was filed in the wrong court, but nothing is stopping the plaintiffs from filing again in the correct court, said U.S. District Court Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk of the Northern District of Texas.
“He shares my vision for the state of Missouri, which is that we should be the safest state in the nation for children,” Bailey said in a phone interview.
Divine appeared at a hearing on Wednesday morning before the Senate Judiciary Committee, along with four others among Trump’s 11 newest judicial nominees.
A left-leaning legal commentary site called Balls and Strikes criticized Divine for writing in 2010 for his college newspaper that Christians are “obliged ethically to impose their beliefs on others.”
But Divine’s colleagues see his conservative convictions and strong Christian faith as an asset.
Andrew Nussbaum, who clerked alongside Divine for Chief Judge William H. Pryor Jr. on the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, said he bonded with Divine “over a shared faith and worldview that sets God, family, and country at the center of a vision for justice in American society.”
“Since our clerkship, I’ve followed Josh’s career closely, applauding his victories for Missouri’s children in Noe v. Parson and for the rule of law in his defeat of the federal government’s illegal attempts at student-loan cancellation,” Nussbaum said.
In Noe v. Parson, the Cole County, Missouri, Circuit Court sided with Divine to uphold a Missouri law that protects children from gender transition procedures.
In 2023, Divine lost his ability to walk in a snowboarding accident that almost cost him his life. He regained his ability to walk, and Hawley says that fortitude will serve him well as a judge.
“Josh fought to regain his ability to walk, just as he has fought for Missourians in court, day in and day out, and you’ll see here in a moment when he walks to the table that he has now fully regained his ability,” Hawley said at the Wednesday hearing. “We thank the Lord for that, but we also look at his tenacity and the character that it displays.”
Nussbaum shares Divine’s passion for endurance sports, and he was shocked when Divine nearly died two years ago while snowboarding.
“But Josh responded to that accident as you would expect him to: He worked harder than anyone else at physical therapy and was back in the courtroom mere weeks after being in the [intensive care unit],” Nussbaum said.
No obstacle could stop Divine from achieving at the highest level, Bailey said.
“I think that’s a testament not only to his physical ability,” the Missouri AG said, “but his mental acumen and just dedication to doing the right things for the right reasons.”
According to Bailey, Divine’s nomination bodes well for Trump’s future judicial picks.
“I think it proves that if you fight for the rule of law and the principles that put this country first and put our Constitution first as our national identity—those are great attributes for judicial appointment,” Bailey told The Daily Signal.
If members of the Senate Judiciary Committee vote to advance Divine’s nomination, it will then move to a vote by the entire Senate. If confirmed, Trump will issue a judicial commission to make the appointment official.