In 1987, President Ronald Reagan appointed her to the federal bench as a United States District Judge in the Eastern District of New York. She was the first woman to serve on the 14-member bench in the Eastern District of New York and, at 35 years old, one of the youngest Federal judges in the nation. Among the trials she presided over was one concerning the Golden Venture, a ship carrying around 300 would-be immigrants from China, which crashed-landed on a sandbar off Queens, New York in June, 1993.