PHILADELPHIA — Samuel Anthony Alito Jr. doesn't spend all his time with his nose in a law book.

He's said to be a gourmet cook, interested in tennis and music and an ardent fan of baseball's Philadelphia Phillies.

He was born on April Fool's Day to a mother who was candid enough to tell the world he was upset that he didn't get the Supreme Court nomination a month ago.

He did get it Monday, chosen by President Bush to take the place of retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.

Indeed, Alito has seemed destined to be an appeals court judge, the job he's had for the past 15 years, if not a justice on the Supreme Court, the highest appellate court in the land.

Colleagues describe him as smart, hardworking, polite.

"Unlike many of the rest of us, he is actually capable of sitting at his desk for a long time and thinking about hard legal issues," says attorney Paul Fishman, who once ran Alito's criminal division at the U.S. attorney's office in New Jersey.

Even as an assistant prosecutor decades ago, Alito ended up assigned to appeals work because it suited him so well, former associates say.

Alito, 55, was named by the president's father to the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia in 1990.

He's made his mark as a conservative judge on a court with a reputation for being among the nation's most liberal. He's even been dubbed "Scalito," suggesting his opinions on the high court could echo those of Antonin Scalia on the court's right edge.

He came to Washington at the start of the Reagan administration, first as assistant to the solicitor general, sometimes arguing cases before the Supreme Court, then as deputy attorney general. He went back home to New Jersey in 1987 to be U.S. attorney for the District of New Jersey, where his first assistant was Michael Chertoff, now the Homeland Security secretary.

His New Jersey ties run deep. The son of an Italian immigrant, he was born in Trenton and attended Princeton University. He headed to Connecticut to receive his law degree, graduating from Yale University in 1975.

Alito joined the Army ROTC at Princeton. In 1972, one year before the military draft ended but while the Vietnam War was still raging, he was one of nine in his class to receive a commission in the Army Reserve. He was discharged in 1980 as a captain.

In a prescient, flippant comment, the entry in his college yearbook says, "Sam intends to go to law school and eventually warm a seat on the Supreme Court."