The U.S. Senate has approved President Donald Trump’s first and only nominee to the Boston-based federal appeals court. Until recently, most of the justices on this court were chosen by Democrats and often rejected his policy proposals.

The Republican-led Senate voted 52-46 along party lines to make Joshua Dunlap, a conservative lawyer from Maine who often worked on conservative legal cases, a life-tenured judge on the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

As of Thursday, that court was the only one of the 13 appeals courts without any active judges appointed by Republican presidents. That has helped make district courts in New England a popular place for Democratic state attorneys general and advocacy groups to file cases against Trump’s agenda.

In his first term, Trump didn’t name any judges to the 1st Circuit. At the start of his second term, he almost lost the chance to choose one when his Democratic predecessor, Joe Biden, put forth a nomination to fill a seat that U.S. Circuit Judge William Kayatta had held.

But Biden couldn’t get Julia Lipez confirmed as his candidate before he departed office. Kayatta, who Democratic President Barack Obama appointed, formally became a senior in October 2024, just days before the presidential election that delivered Trump back to the White House.

In July, Trump chose Dunlap, a partner at the legal firm Pierce Atwood, to fill the open position. He said that if the Senate confirmed him, he would “fearlessly defend our Constitution.”

Dunlap got his bachelor’s degree from Pensacola Christian College and then went to Notre Dame Law School, where he graduated in 2008. During law school, he worked as an intern with what is now known as the Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative Christian legal rights nonprofit.