Not everybody was happy when U.S. District Judge Gary Feinerman left private practice in 2010 for a lifetime appointment on the bench. “That was heart-wrenching, I tell you, because he was as good an appellate lawyer as there is,” said Carter G. Phillips, chair of Sidley, Austin LLP’s executive committee. Phillips, who served as managing partner of the firm’s Washington, D.C., office from 1995 to 2012, worked with Feinerman on several cases that reached the U.S. Supreme Court. Feinerman …