Danielle Hunsaker testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee during her confirmation hearing to be U.S. Circuit Judge for the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, on Wednesday. Photo: Diego M. Radzinschi/ALM.

Danielle Hunsaker, a former clerk for Judge Diarmuid O'Scannlain of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, got a step closer Wednesday to filling the seat left open on the court when O'Scannlain took senior status in 2016.

Hunsaker said in her prepared remarks before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday that being confirmed as O'Scannlain's successor would be "a highlight for me in my life," although she said "the prospect of filling his shoes is daunting." Hunsaker, whose father worked in Oregon's timber and construction industry, and whose mother homeschooled her, answered largely friendly questions about her textualist approach to statutory interpretation from Republican Senators on the committee.

President Donald Trump tapped Hunsaker for the Ninth Circuit in August. If confirmed by the full Senate, Hunsaker would be the eighth Trump nominee to take the bench on the nation's largest federal appellate court, which has been a frequent target for criticism by the president.

Her questioning, where she shared the witness table with Second Circuit nominee William Nardini, took a little less than one hour.

But Hunsaker, the presiding judge on the Washington County Circuit Court of Oregon, did sway from the approach of many of Trump's judicial nominees by responding affirmatively to a standard question from Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut about whether Brown v. Board of Education was correctly decided by the U.S. Supreme Court. Hunsaker said that in most instances it was inappropriate for nominees to discuss their thoughts on the High Court's precedent since their job is to apply it rather than critique it. But she noted that Brown is an exceptional, historic case, calling it a "gem in American jurisprudence." The decision, she said, helped to "right a historic wrong" and "abandoned the notion to separate but equal."

"Absolutely, Brown was correctly decided," she said.

Hunsaker, who practiced at Larkins Vacura Kayser in Portland prior to taking the state bench in 2017, also clerked for Judge Paul Joseph Kelly Jr. of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit and U.S. District Judge Michael W. Mosman of the District of Oregon earlier in her career.

Her confirmation hearing went much more smoothly than that of Ryan Bounds, a prior Trump nominee for O'Scannlain's seat who faced opposition from home-state senators, Democrats Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley. The Oregon senators withheld their approval for Bounds, in part, claiming he failed to disclose to their screening committee opinion pieces he wrote for a conservative student paper during his undergraduate studies at Stanford University. Bounds' nomination was withdrawn from the Senate floor amid concerns that he didn't have enough votes for confirmation.

Hunsaker on Wednesday acknowledged the screening work of the senators' bipartisan committee and thanked them for passing her name along to the White House.

"I'm grateful that they included me on the list," she said.