Trump taps Billings attorney for federal judgeship

Former Montana U.S. Attorney Bill Mercer has been nominated to a judgeship on the U.S. District Court. 

President Donald Trump made the nomination Thursday, according to Montana U.S. Sens. Steve Daines and Tim Sheehy. Court nominations have to be approved by the U.S. Senate.

Mercer, a Billings attorney and state representative, declined to discuss the nomination when contacted by Montana Free Press on Friday. 

“House Republicans proudly congratulate our colleague and friend, Representative Bill Mercer, on his nomination to the federal bench. Bill is a man of integrity, principle, and deep legal expertise. His decades of experience—as U.S. Attorney, federal prosecutor, and state legislator—have uniquely prepared him for this important role,” Montana House Speaker Brandon Ler, of Savage, said in a press release Thursday. “We thank President Trump for recognizing Bill’s qualifications and commitment to justice. This nomination is not only a great honor for Bill but for the entire state of Montana.”

Two judges appointed to the federal court’s Montana district by former President Barack Obama are edging toward retirement. This week, Judge Susan Watters announced she would assume senior status next year. In 2022, Judge Dana Christensen announced that he would begin senior status once his successor was confirmed.

In 2024 then-President Joe Biden nominated Danna Jackson, attorney for the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, to replace Christensen, but Daines used his privilege as a senator from the district to which Jackson was nominated to put a hold on the nomination, killing it.

Jackson would have been the Montana district’s first Indigenous judge.

Mercer was nominated in 2001 by then-President George W. Bush to be U.S. attorney in Montana. He served all eight years of the Bush presidency. The attorney’s relationship with the Montana district’s chief justice was rocky. 

In 2006, U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy, now retired, questioned in open court whether Mercer ever concerned himself with justice. At issue was the U.S. attorney’s prosecution of a Montana defendant who had already been tried and sentenced in state court, but was caught possessing firearms, a parole violation and a federal crime.

Mercer said at the time that the Department of Justice wasn’t going to ignore a federal firearms violation by a convicted felon. 

Under Bush, Mercer became part of the U.S. Department of Justice leadership and was working in Washington, D.C., while also serving the Montana district. For a time, Mercer served as the acting associate attorney general under then-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. Bush in 2007 nominated Mercer for the job, which manages several agencies within the DOJ, but later withdrew the pick. 

Mercer’s absence from Montana angered Molloy, who told Gonzales that Mercer was living with family in D.C. and no longer met the residency requirement to be Montana’s top federal lawyer. In congressional testimony, Mercer said he spent about three days a month in Montana. 

An amendment was added to the Patriot Act in 2006 creating exemptions to the residency requirement. NBC News reported that the exemption was postdated to 2005 to accommodate Mercer’s time in D.C. 

In 2007, then-U.S. Sen. Jon Tester, D-Montana, asked for Mercer’s resignation. That June, Mercer said he heard the call of his state’s U.S. senators, would resign from his D.C. post and work solely in Montana.