The incoming Biden administration has a list of to-do-items nearly a mile long, and one group in Texas has something to add: prioritizing nominating qualified candidates for U.S. Attorneys and federal judgeships.

The Texas Democratic Lawyers Association (TDLA) is forming a committee to identify potential nominees for U.S. Attorney and federal judgeships for further evaluation by the 13-member Texas Democratic Congressional Delegation, which will provide advice and counsel to the new administration on qualified U.S. attorney and judicial nominees, albeit on an ad hoc schedule.

A committee working on behalf of the Democratic delegation would also serve as a counter to the infrastructure that already exists for Texas Republicans. In Texas there are four U.S. Attorneys, and they serve as the chief federal law enforcement official for each district. They are nominated by the president. Until the Biden administration can confirm any U.S. Attorneys through the Senate, acting U.S. Attorneys will remain in office.

The proposed committee from the TDLA is still in the works, but there has been outreach to the Texas Democratic delegation. The TDLA points out that a number of former U.S. Attorneys who served in their thirties or forties went on to become major pillars of the party, including former Attorney General Eric Holder, former Senator Doug Jones and Alejandro Mayorkas, the current nominee to lead the Department of Homeland Security.

A federal investigation against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton remains in play after his name was absent Wednesday from a last-minute list of pardons in the waning hours of Donald Trump's presidency.

The investigation centers on allegations that Paxton committed bribery, abuse of office and other crimes. Paxton’s top deputies reported him to the FBI in September, accusing him of using his position to help an Austin real estate developer.

Paxton has not been charged in federal court, so any pardon would have been preemptive. He has broadly denied wrongdoing.

The attorney general spoke at the Jan. 6 rally in Washington shortly before a mob of Trump’s supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol in a deadly riot.

More than 400,000 people have died of the coronavirus in the U.S., according to an NBC News tally early Tuesday, a milestone that seemed unimaginable at the start of the pandemic a year ago.

More than 2 million people have been recorded killed by the virus worldwide, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. The U.S. death toll is the world's worst, even though it makes up less than 5 percent of the world's population.

As of early Tuesday, there have been 400,103 U.S. deaths, according to NBC News' count. The U.S. confirmed its first case of the virus in Seattle on Jan. 21, 2020.