Paul Jeffrey Watford (born August 25, 1967) is an American lawyer serving as a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit since 2012. In February 2016, The New York Times identified Watford as a potential Supreme Court nominee to replace Justice Antonin Scalia. Early life and education Watford was born in 1967 in Garden Grove, California. He attended the University of California, Berkeley, graduating in 1989 with a Bachelor of Arts. He worked as a legal interviewer for the San Francisco Bar Association's lawyer referral service from 1989 to 1991, then attended the UCLA School of Law, where he was an editor of the UCLA Law Review. He graduated in 1994 with a Juris Doctor and Order of the Coif membership. Legal career After law school, Watford was a law clerk for Judge Alex Kozinski of the Ninth Circuit from 1994 to 1995, and for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg of the U.S. Supreme Court from 1995 to 1996. In 1996, Watford joined the law firm Munger, Tolles & Olson. From 1997 to 2000, Watford was an Assistant United States Attorney in the Major Frauds Section of the Criminal Division of the Central District of California, where he prosecuted a wide range of federal criminal cases, including white-collar criminal cases. In 2000 he joined the Los Angeles office of the Chicago-based law firm Sidley Austin, but he returned to Munger in 2001, where he became partner in 2003. At Munger, where he worked until his confirmation, he focused on appellate litigation, appearing regularly in state and federal courts to argue his cases. He has authored or edited nearly twenty briefs prepared for the Supreme Court. Watford is an active member of the American Bar Association, serving as Co-Chair of the ABA Litigation Section's Appellate Practice Committee from 2005 to 2008 and as a member of the ABA's Amicus Curiae Committee from 2007 to 2010. From 2007 to 2009, he taught an upper-level course in judicial opinion writing at the University of Southern California's Gould School of Law. Since June 2012, he has served as treasurer and board member of Neighborhood Legal Services of Los Angeles County, a nonprofit providing pro bono legal services to the poor. Federal judicial service On October 17, 2011, President Obama nominated Watford to a seat on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. The seat