Alaska's three-judge court has been short since 2022; Reardon would fill the last seat

Alaska's federal trial court has three judgeships and has not had three active judges since late 2021. On Wednesday the Senate Judiciary Committee questioned the nominee who would finally fill the bench, Anchorage magistrate judge Kyle Reardon, in a hearing that touched only lightly on why the seat he'd take has sat empty for more than two years.

"The District of Alaska has not been fully constituted as a court since 2022, so we are pleased to be able to fill this remaining vacancy," Sen. Lisa Murkowski said in introducing him.

The shortfall has two causes. Judge Timothy Burgess took senior status in late 2021, and his seat went unfilled until Aaron Peterson was confirmed this February, more than four years later. The second seat opened in July 2024, when Judge Joshua Kindred resigned. For the 19 months between Kindred's departure and Peterson's arrival, the District of Alaska had a single active district judge, Chief Judge Sharon Gleason, with senior judges carrying part of the load.

Kindred's seat did not open through retirement. The Judicial Council of the Ninth Circuit found, after an investigation that produced more than a thousand pages of exhibits, that he had created a hostile work environment for his law clerks, had an inappropriately sexualized relationship with one of them, received nude photographs from a federal prosecutor who appeared in his courtroom, and lied to investigators about it, admitting the lie only when questioned under oath. The council publicly reprimanded him, told him to resign or face referral for impeachment, and he resigned. He left 77 open criminal cases and 148 civil cases on his docket, the court clerk's office said at the time, all reassigned to Gleason. Defense lawyers in cases he had handled then sought new trials over his undisclosed conflicts with prosecutors, and federal judges granted several. The Alaska Supreme Court disbarred him in November 2025.

None of that came up in Reardon's hearing. What did was his record. Murkowski cited a multi-defendant methamphetamine and heroin case he prosecuted on the Kenai Peninsula, after which, she said, a local officer reported that the drug trade dried up for a time and robberies and violence fell. He spent six years as an Army judge advocate and 15 as a federal prosecutor, seven of them in Alaska, and has been a magistrate judge since 2021, handling more than 3,000 criminal and nearly 500 civil matters. He was lead attorney on more than 120 cases, many involving child sexual abuse material or sex trafficking. "He is ready to hit the ground running as a U.S. District Court judge," Murkowski said.

Reardon described the job in modest terms, calling judges umpires who "don't make the law."

The friction came from Democrats. Sen. Mazie Hirono asked about diversity on the bench; Reardon said courts should hire "the best and the brightest" and that diversity "will take care of itself," which Hirono said she didn't think reflected reality. Sen. Richard Blumenthal said he would oppose the panel's nominees over their refusal to say who won the 2020 popular vote or to call the Jan. 6 riot an attack on the Capitol.

The committee's next business meeting is Sept. 24. Written questions for the nominee are due by then.