On February 7, 2013, President Obama nominated Hughes to serve as a United States Circuit Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, to the seat vacated by Judge William Curtis Bryson who took senior status on January 7, 2013. He received a hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee on June 19, 2013, and was reported to the floor of the Senate on July 18, 2013, by voice vote. The Senate confirmed his nomination on September 24, 2013, by a vote of 98–0. He received his commission on September 24, 2013. He assumed office on September 30, 2013. Hughes is the first openly gay judge on a federal circuit court. Obama previously nominated another gay lawyer, Edward C. DuMont, to the same court, but DuMont withdrew his name when it became clear that his nomination was not going to proceed in the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Todd Michael Hughes (born November 1966) is a United States Circuit Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.

Hughes was born in November, 1966, in Delaware, Ohio. He graduated from Harvard College with an Artium Baccalaureus degree in 1989. He earned both a Juris Doctor with honors and a Master of Arts in English at a joint degree program at Duke University in 1992. He clerked for Robert B. Krupansky of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. In 1994, he joined the Commercial Litigation Branch of the Civil Division at the United States Department of Justice as a trial attorney. He was appointed Assistant Director for Commercial Litigation in 1999 and became Deputy Director in 2007, serving until 2013.