His appointment, announced on the UK’s judiciary website, is to fill a vacancy in the High Court arising from judges going into retirement or being elevated to the Court of Appeal.

Rajah, 56, will be a judge in the chancery division.

Son of a senior lawyer in Ipoh, Rajah was educated in Malaysia and England before studying law at the University of Nottingham and was called to the Bar in 1989.

He practised general chancery law, eventually specialising in international trust and estate litigation and became a Queen’s Counsel (now King’s Counsel) in 2011. He was appointed a recorder, the first step on the judicial ladder, in 2016 and was authorised to sit as a High Court judge in 2020.