This week President Obama appointed Illinois Appellate Court Justice Sharon Johnson Coleman and Sidley Austin partner Gary Scott Feinerman to the Northern District of Illinois bench.  Here is biographical information from President Obama’s press release:

• Justice Sharon Johnson Coleman sits on the Illinois Appellate Court in Chicago, a position she has held since 2008.  From 1996 until 2008, Justice Coleman served as a judge of the Circuit Court of Cook County, Illinois.  Between 1993 and 1996, she held the position of Deputy State’s Attorney and Bureau Chief for the Public Interest Bureau of the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office.  From 1989 to 1993, Justice Coleman served as an Assistant United States Attorney in the Northern District of Illinois.  From 1984 until 1989, she was an Assistant State’s Attorney in Cook County.  Justice Coleman received her J.D. in 1984 from Washington University School of Law in St. Louis and her B.A. in 1981 from Northern Illinois University.
• Gary Scott Feinerman is a partner in the Chicago office of Sidley Austin LLP, where he practices in the general litigation and appellate practice groups.  He received his B.A., summa cum laude¸ from Yale College in 1987 and his J.D. from Stanford, where he was a member of the Order of the Coif and the Law Review, in 1991.  After law school, Feinerman clerked for Judge Joel M. Flaum of the Seventh Circuit and for Justice Anthony M. Kennedy of the Supreme Court of the United States.  After his clerkships, Feinerman worked in the Justice Department’s Office of Policy Development (now known as the Office of Legal Policy).  From 2003- 2007, Feinerman served as Solicitor General of Illinois, where he received  Best Brief Awards from the National Association of Attorneys General in each year from 2004-2007.