Despite being a Republican, Tallman was nominated by President Bill Clinton to his current seat on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit on October 20, 1999 and was confirmed by a voice vote of the United States Senate on May 24, 2000. He received his commission on May 25, 2000. Tallman was nominated to fill the seat vacated by longtime Ninth Circuit judge Betty Binns Fletcher, who took senior status in 1998. Clinton's previous nominee to that seat, conservative Washington State Supreme Court Justice Barbara Durham, had been nominated in January 1999 as part of a bipartisan deal brokered by Washington's senators at the time, Slade Gorton and Patty Murray. However, Durham withdrew her nomination to the seat just four months later because of her husband's terminal heart condition. Tallman then was nominated after he was one of three potential nominees that Gorton recommended to the White House.