A United States federal judge is a judge appointed by the President of the United States and confirmed by the United States Senate in accordance with Article III of the United States Constitution.
While judges of some courts with special jurisdictions, including bankruptcy judges, are also sometimes referred to as "federal judges", they are not judges in the sense in which the term is used in Article III. The distinction is sometimes expressed by saying that they are not "Article III judges", because the power of these other kinds of federal judges does not derive from Article III of the U.S. Constitution.
In addition to the United States Supreme Court, whose existence and some aspects of whose jurisdiction are beyond the Constitutional power of Congress to alter, acts of Congress have established 13 courts of appeals (also called "circuit courts") with appellate jurisdiction over different regions of the United States, and 94 United States district courts. Every judge presiding over such a court falls within the category of federal judges, from the Chief Justice and Associate Justices of the Supreme Court to the judges of the United States district courts.
