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President Trump nominated Neil Gorsuch to fill the 11-month-old vacancy on the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday night, fulfilling his campaign promise to appoint a staunch conservative justice to replace Antonin Scalia, reports the Atlantic .

In a primetime ceremony at the White House, Trump praised Gorsuch as among the finest jurists in the country and a worthy successor to the conservative icon he would replace.

"Judge Gorsuch has outstanding legal skills, a brilliant mind, tremendous discipline, and has earned bipartisan support," Trump said. "When he was nominated to the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals, he was confirmed by the Senate unanimously."

Gorsuch, a 49-year-old federal appellate judge based in Colorado, currently sits on the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals. President George W. Bush appointed him to the Tenth Circuit in 2006.

"The towering judges that have served in this particular seat of the Supreme Court, including Antonin Scalia and Robert Jackson, are much in my mind at this moment," Gorsuch said after Trump's announcement. "Justice Scalia was a lion of the law. Agree or disagree with him, all of his colleagues on the bench share his wisdom and his humor, and like them, I miss him."