The U.S. Senate on Tuesday confirmed the first new federal judge of 2024 as senators on a bipartisan vote approved President Joe Biden’s nominee John Kazen to serve as a federal trial judge in Texas.

The Democratic-led Senate voted 83-14 to elevate Kazen, a magistrate judge in Laredo, Texas, to a position as a life-tenured district court judge in the Southern District of Texas after the state’s two Republican senators voiced their support.

The vote made him Biden’s first confirmed district court judge in the state.

The support of Texas Senators John Cornyn and Ted Cruz was crucial because of a long-standing Senate custom in which senators must return “blue slips” before a district court nominee in their state can be considered.

That gives senators an effective veto over nominees they disfavor from their states. Progressive advocates have complained that Republican senators have used that power to slow or block judicial appointments.

Senator Dick Durbin, a Democrat from Illinois who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee, has declined to abandon the blue slip custom. He has called Kazen an example of how Republicans can work on a bipartisan basis with the White House to identify nominees.

Texas’ four federal district courts still have seven other vacancies pending. Biden on Dec. 19 said he plans to nominate U.S. Magistrate Judges Ernesto Gonzalez and Leon Schydlower to fill two of those vacancies in the state’s Western District.

Tuesday’s vote marked the 167th confirmation of one of Biden’s federal judicial nominees. Some progressive advocates have expressed concern that Biden during his current term may not be able to surpass the 234 appointments Republican former President Donald Trump made during his four years in office.

Kazen has served as a magistrate judge since 2018 and was previously a partner at a law firm he established, Kazen, Meurer, & Pérez, from 1997 to 2018. He has garnered bipartisan support throughout the nomination process.

With his confirmation by the Senate, Kazen will now follow in the footsteps of his father, George Kazen, who retired as a federal judge in the Southern District of Texas in 2018 and died in 2021.

The Laredo courthouse was renamed in former Judge George Kazen’s honor in 2018.