Bumatay is an assistant U.S. attorney in California handling various criminal issues, including opioid abuse and transnational organized crime, according to the White House. He went to Yale and Harvard Law School, and the White House said Bumatay is a member of the National Filipino American Lawyers Association, the National Asian Pacific American Bar Association and the Tom Homann LGBT Law Association.

Bumatay is the second openly gay person Trump has nominated for the federal bench, according to the Washington Blade. The first was Mary Rowland, a magistrate judge who Trump nominated to be on the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois in June; she is waiting to be confirmed by the Senate.

There is currently only one openly gay federal appeals court judge in the U.S., according to the Washington Blade: Todd Hughes, who was nominated by President Barack Obama in 2013 to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.