The Senate voted Monday night to confirm Lucy Koh to a lifetime seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, making her the first Korean American woman to ever serve as a federal appeals court judge.

The Senate confirmed Koh in a 50-45 vote. Every Democrat voted for her. Every Republican present voted against her. Five Republicans missed the vote. The full tally is here .

Koh, 53, has been a U.S. district judge in California since 2010. She previously worked as a judge on the Santa Clara County Superior Court in California and as a litigation partner at the law firm McDermott Will & Emery representing tech companies in patent, trade secret and commercial civil matters. She was also assistant U.S. attorney in the Office of the U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California from 1997 to 2000.

For some context on the significance of Kohs presence on the federal bench, there have been a total of 806 federal appeals court judges since the nations current system of appeals courts was formed in 1891, according to Federal Judicial Center data. Koh is the only Korean American woman in the mix.

With Kohs confirmation, President Joe Biden has now confirmed 10 appeals court judges and 29 lifetime federal judges. Hes confirmed more judges than decades of past presidents had by this point in their first year in office.

There are a couple of reasons why Biden and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) are moving so fast to do this: They know they may only have two years to get Bidens preferred picks through if Republicans win control of the Senate in November 2022. They also want to offset the homogenous and massive number of judges confirmed by President Donald Trump.

Biden has made diversity a driving factor in his judicial picks, both in terms of demographic factors like race and gender as well as in professional backgrounds. The federal bench is almost entirely made up of white, male judges with backgrounds as corporate lawyers and prosecutors. Bidens court picks have included public defenders , civil rights lawyers and voting rights attorneys , as well as historic picks including Native American women , Black women and Muslim Americans .

On Tuesday, Schumer vowed to keep making judicial confirmations a priority.

We are going to keep working in the months ahead, he said on the Senate floor. Today, [lifetime] Article III judges are still overwhelmingly white, overwhelmingly male, and overwhelmingly from big law firms or prosecutorial backgrounds. Many of these individuals have served admirably on the bench, but we hope the trailblazers of today can be closer to the norm of tomorrow: we want our courts to include more women, more diverse candidates both demographically and professionally and more judges who come from unique walks of life.

The Senate is already scheduled to vote on two more judicial nominees this week. One of them, Jennifer Sung, who is Chinese American, is also up for a seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit. If confirmed, she, like Koh, will be one of very few Asian Americans to sit on the federal judiciary.