Nancy Abudu, strategic litigation director for the Southern Poverty Law Center, was confirmed by the U.S. Senate on Thursday as a judge on the U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals.

Abudu becomes the first Black woman to sit on the Atlanta-based 11th Circuit, which hears federal cases from Alabama, Georgia and Florida.

“Today’s historic Senate confirmation of Nancy Abudu to the 11th Circuit affirms what we have always known — that Nancy is an extraordinarily qualified and experienced jurist who is committed to the U.S. Constitution and upholding the fundamental rights of all people,” said Margret Huang, president and CEO of the SPLC and the SPLC Action Fund, in a statement. “She has a brilliant legal mind and will bring the fairness and intellectual rigor this judgeship demands.”

When President Biden nominated Abudu in January to the federal appeals court, the White House called her “an embodiment of the American Dream.

“The daughter of Ghanaian immigrants who worked her way up to become one of the nation’s leading civil rights attorneys, Ms. Abudu is an embodiment of the American Dream,” a White House statement read. “And she has dedicated her career to ensuring that dream is alive and well for everyone in this country.”