By Ariane de Vogue, CNN Supreme Court Reporter

The Honorable Carlton W. Reeves, a 55-year-old judge in Mississippi, did something last week no other federal judge has done in the Trump era.

Evoking the history of segregation in the South, Reeves publicly lambasted the President for his attacks on judges, questioned Trump's commitment to diversity on the federal bench and called upon judges to do more to defend the judiciary.

While sitting Supreme Court justices, notably Chief Justice John Roberts, have pushed back on Trump's attacks at times, saying there are no Democratic judges or Republican judges, and some judges in federal courts have used harsh language to block some of his more controversial policies, no other federal judge has launched such a broad assault.

Reeves did so during a speech Thursday at the University of Virginia without ever mentioning Trump's name.

The speech also represented a rare, and some would say unwelcome, entry into the political arena from the federal bench, where judges publicly attempt to stay away from partisanship, regardless of their policy views.

In what could be an unprecedented move, Reeves publicly criticized the lack of diversity of the President's judicial nominees, using the speech as an entreaty to examine the role of diversity on the bench.

Trump's two Supreme Court nominees, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, both attended the same elite high school in the suburbs of Washington, for instance.

"We have as many justices who have graduated from Georgetown Prep as we have justices who have lived as a non-white person," Reeves said, referring to Justices Clarence Thomas and Sonia Sotomayor.

Reeves is more than a bystander on diversity on the bench. He is the second African-American to be appointed as a federal judge in Mississippi and has spoken about the hate mail he has received since becoming a judge.

He was among the first full class to enter an integrated first-grade classroom at a public school in Yazoo City, Mississippi. He graduated from Jackson State University and the University of Virginia School of Law in 1989 and was nominated to the US District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi by President Barack Obama.

At his confirmation hearing in 2010, Sen. Richard Durbin noted that Reeves' nomination was historic.

"You are the first African-American nominated for a federal judgeship in the State of Mississippi in 25 years, since Judge Henry Wingate was nominated by President Reagan in 1985," Durbin said.

Durbin asked Reeves to talk about the fact that Mississippi at the time had the highest percentage of African-Americans of any state and what the nomination meant.

"People need to see that they have a chance," Reeves said, " that they, too, can one day come to the great hall of the Senate and be nominated by a president to be a judge."