[1] Lindley was nominated by President Warren G. Harding on September 20, 1922, to the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Illinois, to a new seat authorized by 42 Stat.
He was confirmed by the United States Senate on September 22, 1922, and received his commission the same day.
His service terminated on October 23, 1949, due to his elevation to the Seventh Circuit.
[1] In 1932 when Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. retired from the Supreme Court, Lindley was on President Herbert Hoover’s list of possible replacements,[2] although the seat ultimately went to Benjamin N. Cardozo.
Lindley was nominated by President Harry S. Truman on September 15, 1949, to a seat on the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit vacated by Judge Sherman Minton.