UPDATES & ANALYSIS

Commission nominates three for Iowa Court of Appeals vacancy

by Ryan Koopmans | August 27, 2013

By Ryan Koopmans

Last week, the 17-member Iowa Judicial Nominating Commission sent three candidates to Governor Branstad  for the Iowa Court of Appeals vacancy created by the retirement of Chief Judge Larry Eisenhauer.  Moving on to the next round are Sharon Greer, Judge Christopher McDonald, and Jeanie Vaudt.

Greer is a partner at Cartwright, Druker & Ryden in Marshalltown, where she focuses on civil defense litigation.  Before that she was an associate at Greer, Nelson, Bertrell, Barry, Montgomery & Bovee.  She graduated from the University of  Iowa College of Law.

Judge McDonald is a district court judge in the Fifth Judicial District (Polk County).  Before that, he served as in-house counsel at Aviva, and before that he worked for Belin McCormick and Faegre & Benson (now Faegre Baker Daniels).  McDonald graduated first in his class from the University of Iowa College of Law and started his  legal career as a law clerk for Eighth Circuit Judge David Hansen.  (Coincidentally, another former Hansen clerk, Jane Kelly, was recently confirmed to the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals.)

Vaudt currently serves as an assistant attorney general with the Iowa Department of Justice, where she practices in the Administrative Law and Licensing Division.  A graduate of the Drake law school, Vaudt clerked on the Iowa Supreme Court for former Chief Justice Louis Lavorato and started her legal practice at Davis, Brown, Koehn, Shors & Roberts in Des Moines.

The nominees’ applications are available here.