Washington ? After five years of trying, President Barack Obama has placed his first nominee — a graduate of Lawrence High School — on a key appeals court.

The Senate on Thursday confirmed Sri Srinivasan to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. The court is considered the most important in the country after the Supreme Court. The Senate voted 97-0 in favor of his nomination.

Srinivasan is currently the principal deputy in the Office of the Solicitor General. He has worked in both Democratic and Republican administrations and served as a law clerk to former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor.

The D.C. circuit court will now be evenly split between nominees from Democratic and Republican presidents.

Obama’s previous nominee for the court, Caitlin Halligan, withdrew her nomination after it was blocked by Republicans.

Srinivasan, 46, was born in India, but he moved at a young age with his family to Lawrence, where he grew up. He was a Lawrence High point guard on the basketball team in the 1980s and spoke at the LHS graduation ceremony in 1985, according to Journal-World archives.

He went on to earn a bachelor’s degree and law degree from Stanford University. He also has a master’s degree in business administration from Stanford and teaches at Harvard.

Srinivasan was named to his post in the solicitor general’s office in 2011 and has also served as an intern for retired U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Deanell Reece Tacha, also a Lawrence resident.