One could say Adeel Mangi has baggage.

A 46-year-old partner at the Manhattan-based white shoe law firm Patterson Belknap, Mangi was appointed late last year by President Joe Biden to sit on the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which oversees district courts in Delaware, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. But the Muslim American litigator’s nomination has been anything but smooth sailing: Mangi’s recent advisory board role for Rutgers Law School’s Center for Security, Race and Rights, an anti-Israel research office that has platformed a convicted terrorist fundraiser, has become a flashpoint in the Senate Judiciary Committee and prompted at least one GOP-led investigation.