The United States Senate on Thursday, November 12, confirmed Gregory Carl Cook, an associate justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, as a federal judge for the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Alabama, voting 49 to 27 to give him a lifetime seat on the federal bench.
The confirmation vote, recorded as Roll Call Vote 260 of the 119th Congress on nomination PN1181-1, came hours after the Senate voted 50 to 27 to invoke cloture and end debate on the nomination. According to the published tally, 49 Republicans voted to confirm, 27 Democrats voted against, and 24 senators — 18 Democrats, four Republicans and two independents — did not vote.
Cook's confirmation is the first judicial confirmation of the Senate's lame-duck session — the stretch of work between last week's midterm elections and January 2027, when Democrats are set to take control of the chamber. That timing is why Republican leaders moved the nomination when they did: every federal judgeship filled now is a lifetime appointment that the incoming majority cannot undo.
The seat, and the court he joins
Cook takes the Birmingham-based seat left open when Judge R. David Proctor took senior status in January 2026. He becomes the seventh judge confirmed under President Donald Trump to the Northern District of Alabama's eight-judge court, and his arrival leaves that court with no vacancies. The Northern District covers northern Alabama, including Birmingham, Huntsville and Tuscaloosa, and hears the region's federal criminal cases, civil-rights and voting litigation, and major civil disputes.
Trump announced his intention to nominate Cook on June 29, 2026. Alabama's two Republican senators, Katie Britt and Tommy Tuberville, backed the pick; Britt, who serves on the Judiciary Committee, called the Florence native "one of Alabama's finest." The Judiciary Committee reported the nomination to the full Senate on September 24 by a 12–10 party-line vote.
A contested hearing
Cook's path was not smooth. At his confirmation hearing, Democratic senators pressed him on the results of the 2020 presidential election and the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, and Alabama Daily News reported that he sidestepped those questions. Senator Dick Durbin criticised Cook for campaigning for the Alabama Supreme Court on strongly partisan themes — a line of attack Democrats repeated before Thursday's vote. Republicans answered that his three decades in practice and his time on the state supreme court made him plainly qualified. Those competing claims are the two parties' stated positions; the 49–27 vote, split almost entirely along party lines, reflects the divide.
Born in 1962 and raised in Florence, Alabama, Cook graduated from Duke University and Harvard Law School (magna cum laude, 1991). He practised for more than 31 years at the Birmingham firm Balch & Bingham, wrote the two-volume treatise Alabama Rules of Civil Procedure Annotated, and served as a captain in the U.S. Air Force. Voters elected him to the Alabama Supreme Court in 2022.
For Alabama, the confirmation opens a second vacancy fight at home. Governor Kay Ivey has said she will appoint a replacement for Cook on the Alabama Supreme Court once he leaves for the federal bench, so the state court that decides Alabama's biggest civil and criminal appeals will get a new justice by appointment in the coming weeks.
What happens next
Cook now awaits his formal judicial commission, the paperwork that completes a federal appointment, after which he can be sworn in and begin hearing cases in the Northern District. Because federal district judges serve for life, the 64-year-old will likely shape federal law in northern Alabama for decades — long after the Senate that confirmed him has changed hands.
Sources: U.S. Senate roll call records for Votes 259 and 260 (119th Congress, 2nd session); Critical Report's tally of the November 12 confirmation; Alabama Daily News reporting on the nomination, the September 24 committee vote and the confirmation hearing.