WASHINGTON (AFP) -- Merrick Garland, a centrist judge with a long and distinguished career in the halls of justice, is perhaps President Barack Obama’s best chance at persuading his Republican foes who control the Senate to confirm his Supreme Court nominee.

Obama could have broken new ground by choosing a first-ever Asian-American -- or fifth woman, or third African-American -- to serve as one of the final arbiters of the U.S. Constitution, weighing some of the most critical issues of our time.

But on Wednesday, he instead nominated Garland, a mild-mannered Jewish judge from Chicago whose career path mirrors that of some of the currently sitting justices, to replace the late stalwart conservative Antonin Scalia.

At 63, the bespectacled, gray-haired Garland is the oldest high court nominee in a generation. Obama had previously considered him for the post, six years ago, when he made his last nomination to the bench.

Garland is the chief judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in Washington, which has served as a key channel for many of the nation’s brightest legal minds who went on to don the black robes of the Supreme Court.

Like all but three of the currently sitting justices, he attended Harvard Law School.

In addressing the nation for the first time after Obama tapped him, Garland held back tears as he spoke of how early on in his career he convinced frightened mothers and grandmothers to testify against violent gangsters.

“Trust that justice will be done in our courts without prejudice or partisanship is what, in a large part, distinguishes this country from others,”

Garland said, speaking alongside the president in the White House Rose Garden.

Throughout his career, Garland said, his task has been to ensure that “the rule of law would prevail.”

“People must be confident that a judge’s decisions are determined by the law and only the law.”

As prosecutor, Garland handled several cases of national significance, including leading the investigation and prosecution that ultimately saw Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh sentenced to life over the attacks that killed 168 people in 1995.

At the Justice Department, where he eventually served as Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General, he also oversaw the agency’s response to “Unabomber” Ted Kaczynski, who planted and mailed homemade bombs, and the anti-government Montana Freemen.

Garland spoke emotionally of his humble beginnings and his background as the grandchild of immigrants who came to America in the early 1900s “fleeing anti-Semitism and hoping to make a better life for their children.”

His grandparents came from the Pale of Settlement, a territory in the west of czarist Russia where Jews were allowed to reside permanently.

In Chicago, “my father who ran the smallest of small businesses, from a room in our basement, took me with him as he made the rounds to his customers, always impressing upon me the importance of hard work and fair dealing,” Garland said.

“There, my mother headed the local PTA (parent-teacher association) and school board and directed a volunteer services agency, all the while instilling in my sisters and me the understanding that service to the community is a responsibility above all others.”