Two nominees for the federal bench in the Atlanta-based Northern District of Georgia—Alston & Bird partner Michael Brown and Georgia Court of Appeals Judge Billy Ray II—appeared jointly at their U.S. Senate confirmation hearing Wednesday, sharing occasional questions from Judiciary Committee panelists with two other nominees from other states.

The committee concluded Wednesday's hearing without voting to forward the nominees' names to the full Senate for approval.

At the hearing, Brown and Ray both replied briefly to two questions posed by Senate Judiciary Committee member Thom Tillis, R-North Carolina, who asked—in what he referred to as a “lightning round”—if impartiality was “an aspiration or an expectation” for judges and when it might be appropriate to overturn legal precedent.