WASHINGTON — Now that Lincoln D. Almond has been named to fill a long-vacant seat on the federal court in Rhode Island, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse has backed off an earlier suggestion that the Senate should not consider such an appointment this late in President Bush’s term.

“As irritated as I might be at the Bush administration, there’s now a Rhode Islander involved,” Whitehouse said of Almond, 44, a U.S. magistrate judge since 2004, a onetime partner in a prominent Providence law firm, and the son of former Gov. Lincoln C. Almond. “He’s entitled to fair consideration,” Whitehouse said.

The senator said in an interview that the Bush White House did not confer enough with him and Sen. Jack Reed about Almond’s nomination to the U.S. District Court in Rhode Island. But that “probably isn’t his fault,” Whitehouse said, so “it wouldn’t be fair to Magistrate Almond” to stall his nomination.

Still, Democrats Whitehouse and Reed — who by Senate tradition hold great sway over federal judicial nominations in their home state — left plenty of room for uncertainty about the fate of Republican Almond. Whitehouse would not go so far as to agree, for example, that his preference would be to get Almond a Senate confirmation hearing and a vote on whether he should serve on the federal bench.

“The clock might run out” on Mr. Bush’s term before Almond can be seated, said Whitehouse, who sits on the Judiciary Committee, which has jurisdiction over nominations to the federal courts. He portrayed the $165,200-a-year seat on the U.S. court as depending largely on a Senate process that is unfamiliar to him.

Reaction to last week’s nomination of Almond shows how deeply Washington’s political tensions have reached into selections for the local U.S. courts — even in Rhode Island, historically an outpost of relative calm during the federal judicial wars of two decades.

First U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Bruce M. Selya voiced concern that the Almond appointment is being treated “as a matter of politics rather than as a matter of responding to the real needs” of an important court.

Selya, a former federal district judge nominated by Republican President Ronald Reagan under the patronage of Republican Sen. John H. Chafee, expressed hope that senators would focus on the traits of “a very qualified nominee,” as he called Almond, rather than on “who is making the nomination” — meaning Mr. Bush.

“In this state at least,” there is a long history of bipartisanship in the seating of federal judges, Selya said Friday.

Presidents have the power to appoint federal jurists — including those on the nation’s 89 U.S. District Courts, its 13 circuit courts of appeals, and the Supreme Court. The Senate has the power to advise the president and consent to his nominations. In practice, the seating of judges on the local benches — and to a lesser extent the appellate courts — has long been a more parochial business than anything spelled out in the Constitution. District Court appointments in a state belong to the president but they have traditionally been doled out according to the wishes of the senior senator who belongs to the president’s political party.

In March of 2006, Judge Ernest C. Torres, a Reagan appointee, announced that he would take senior status, opening the third active seat on the Rhode Island court. Former Republican Sen. Lincoln D. Chafee said Monday that he thinks a nomination to that judgeship lagged at least partly because he resisted a White House request designed, in his view, to diminish his influence in the selection.

Rather than presenting his choice for the seat, Chafee said, he was asked to submit a list of three potential picks. He said he declined to do so. “You also have to factor in the extreme political polarization of judicial nomination,” Chafee said, adding the view that this worsened under Mr. Bush.

With Whitehouse’s defeat of Chafee in November 2006, Rhode Island no longer had a senator of the president’s party. That would have meant that the judicial patronage would shift to Republican Governor Carcieri, according to Norman Ornstein, a congressional scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington think tank.

Carcieri spokesman Jeff Neal confirmed that Carcieri was asked to submit a list of names for Mr. Bush’s consideration. He declined to say whether Almond’s name was on the list. Almond’s father, the former GOP governor, said the White House has counseled the nominee not to talk to the press during Senate consideration of his name. But Almond said his son was interviewed several months ago by a deputy White House counsel and other administration representatives. Magistrate Judge Almond was later asked to fill out certain paperwork — a clue, according to his father, that he was the likely nominee.

Whitehouse said he was never consulted about the nomination by the White House or the governor’s office. He said his understanding of tradition is that federal judicial nominations should be made by a consensus involving both senators from the state concerned, regardless of political affiliation.

“You’d think it would be particularly true when both senators are lawyers who might actually have some familiarity with the names involved,” Whitehouse said Monday. Like Reed, Whitehouse said he has met Almond but knows little about his record. He also moderated the views he had expressed about the open seat during an interview in September.

“When you consider that time is as short as it is, why we would consider a lifetime appointment for a Bush appointee in the waning days of the administration when they haven’t even worked with us, just doesn’t make sense,” Whitehouse said at the time.

The White House press office said it would not comment on any aspect of the nomination. Neal said Carcieri may not have consulted with Whitehouse, but he indicated that the governor felt his responsibility was to work with the Bush administration.

After Almond’s nomination Thursday, Reed and Whitehouse issued a joint statement noting that Mr. Bush had been aware of the district court vacancy for almost two years. But they pledged to give Almond “careful and independent consideration.”

Asked on Friday whether he finds fault with how Mr. Bush handled the Almond matter, Reed would say only that it had taken place at “a very measured tempo.” Reed was asked whether it would be in the interest of Democrats to impose such a tempo on Almond’s confirmation, so that a new president — possibly a Democrat — could offer a different nominee in 2009.

“Our first obligation” is to review Almond’s nomination, Reed replied. “How long it takes” the Senate to consider the matter “is not our sole prerogative,” Reed said.

Whitehouse said it would not be fair for him to try to run the clock out on the nomination deliberately. He said the confirmation process, which includes hearings before his committee, is not under his control.

Whitehouse was asked, insofar as he has any influence, whether it was his preference to give Almond a hearing and get his nomination to a vote.

“At this point my position is that it’s the beginning of the process,” Whitehouse replied. “I’m not that familiar with how it works.” Almond is the first Rhode Island nominee to come before him on the committee “and I’m disappointed that the Bush administration did not choose to engage in a consultative process,” he said.

“But now they’ve done what they’ve done and let the process begin.”

jmulligan@belo-dc.com