What We Do

The Vetting Room is a legal blog dedicated to discussing, examining, and analyzing judicial nominations.  Specifically, we research the records of President Trump’s judicial nominees, condense the important issues, and present it for public use.  All of our investigations are conducted by volunteer attorneys who are committed to an independent and thorough review.  Our posts are the product of multiple rounds of research and editing, and sometimes include the contributions of multiple attorneys.

The Vetting Room is not formally affiliated with any partisan or nonpartisan groups, and maintains the primary goal of improving public engagement with the federal judicial confirmation process.

Who We Are

Harsh Voruganti is the Founder and Editor of The Vetting Room.  Mr. Voruganti has been interested (some would say obsessed) with judicial nominations since discovering the subject in college, and is passionate about maintaining a functioning, impartial judiciary.  Professionally, Mr. Voruganti is an Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney with the City of Alexandria.  He was formerly a principal at The Voruganti Law Firm, practicing criminal defense, family law, landlord-tenant law, and civil rights law in Virginia.  He previously worked on religious freedom issues at the American Civil Liberties Union and the Hindu American Foundation, and on judicial nominations as an extern at the Department of Justice Office of Legal Policy.

Daniel Tilley is a staff attorney with the ACLU of Florida whose work focuses primarily on the LGBTQ community. Among his other work, he served as lead counsel in the ACLU’s federal-court litigation that, as part of a pair of consolidated cases and a team of lawyers, brought marriage equality to Florida in January 2015. More recently, he has focused on assisting transgender individuals in receiving adequate healthcare in confinement settings (prisons, jails, and civil commitment).

Maxwelle Sokol is an attorney licensed to practice in Washington D.C. and Virginia. She started her practice in employment law and civil rights litigation, and argued the appeal and co-wrote all briefs in Sims v. Labowitz, 885 F. 3d 254 (4th Cir. 2018), a precedential police misconduct case regarding minors’ right of privacy. She currently advises on U.S. data privacy law in Hamburg, Germany. A native to Los Angeles, she earned her B.A. in philosophy from Loyola Marymount University and her J.D. from the University of Texas School of Law.

Gregory M. Lipper is a trial and appellate litigator at Clinton Brook & Peed in Washington, DC. He previously served as Senior Litigation Counsel at Americans United for Separation of Church and State. You can follow Greg on Twitter at @theglipper.

Jess Pezley is a Senior Staff Attorney at the American Association for Justice, a nonprofit advocacy organization for plaintiffs’ lawyers and access to justice issues.  Jess earned her B.A. in political science and history from the University of Colorado at Boulder and her J.D. from Lewis & Clark Law School in Portland, Oregon.  You can follow Jess on Twitter at @Jessjanepez.

Prospective Writers & Researchers

Interested in profiling a nominee, writing a guest blog on judicial nominations, or assisting in research? Contact us here.