President Donald Trump is nominating a Maine judge to serve as the state’s top federal prosecutor.

Andrew Benson, a Maine District Court judge, was officially nominated Tuesday to serve as U.S. attorney for the District of Maine.

If confirmed by the Senate, Benson would succeed former U.S. Attorney Darcie McElwee, whom Trump fired in February. She had been nominated by former President Joe Biden.

Benson, who grew up in Bethel and lives in Athens, was appointed to the District Court by Republican Gov. Paul LePage in 2014 and reappointed by Democratic Gov. Janet Mills in 2021. Prior to that, he was a prosecutor in the Office of the Maine Attorney General.

Barbara Cardone, a spokesperson for the Maine Judicial Branch, said Thursday that she believes that Benson can continue serving as a judge until he’s sworn into federal office. He is based in Skowhegan.

A vote in the Senate Judiciary Committee on his nomination has not yet been scheduled.

Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, said in a written statement Thursday that she supports Benson’s nomination and hopes he will receive bipartisan support, considering that he was unanimously confirmed as a judge twice by the Maine Senate.

“At a time when our state faces such serious threats, including illegal Chinese marijuana grow houses and increasing drug trafficking from out-of-state gang members, it is especially important that we fill this seat quickly,” Collins said.

Staff for Sen. Angus King, an independent who caucuses with Democrats, said King has met with Benson “and is reviewing his nomination, awaiting further information from the Judiciary Committee.”

John Alsop, whose career as an attorney based in central Maine has intertwined with Benson’s over several decades, believes Benson is a good pick.

“I think he’s highly competent, highly ethical and faithful to the law, and knowledgeable of it,” said Alsop, of Cornville, who also served as Somerset County’s elected probate judge for 17 years and is now a county commissioner.

Alsop was in private practice when Benson was a prosecutor — first with the district attorney’s office in Skowhegan, then with the attorney general’s office. When Benson left the attorney general’s office to become a judge, Alsop was hired to take his job.

Alsop and Benson faced off in several high-profile homicide cases, chief among them the trial of Jay Mercier in 2012. Alsop represented Mercier, an Industry man found guilty of the 1980 murder of Rita St. Peter in Anson, which at the time was the state’s oldest cold-case homicide to be solved and was cracked open by new DNA technology.

“Andrew is exceptionally eloquent and forceful, but very much a gentleman,” Alsop said. “He believes in the system. He handles himself in the courtroom with great ethics and accomplished skill. He’s a good lawyer, he’s a good judge, and I think he’ll make a fine prosecutor in the U.S. attorney’s office.”

Craig Wolff, a career prosecutor who served as McElwee’s first assistant U.S. attorney, has served as U.S. attorney on an acting basis since her firing.

McElwee was later nominated by Mills to serve as a Maine Superior Court justice. She was sworn in on March 28.