“I look forward to hearing from him next month," Sen. Chuck Grassley said of Jeff Sessions. | Getty Sessions confirmation hearing dates announced

Attorney general nominee Jeff Sessions will face the Senate Judiciary Committee in early January for his confirmation hearings – likely to be one of the earliest showdowns between the incoming Trump administration and Senate Democrats over the president-elect’s nominees.

The two-day confirmation hearings will be held Jan. 10 and 11, committee chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) announced late Friday. Grassley had said recently that he intended to hold confirmation hearings even before Donald Trump is sworn in Jan. 20, in order to try to get Sessions promptly confirmed.


“We all know Senator Sessions to be an honorable man who has held public office for more than 20 years,” Grassley said in a statement. “I look forward to hearing from him next month.”

Other attorney general nominees for incoming presidents in the past, such as former Attorney General Eric Holder in 2009, have had their confirmation hearings before the president-elect was sworn in.

Sessions also returned a nominee questionnaire to the committee on Friday, a standard practice of Cabinet picks.

Senate Democrats have promised thorough scrutiny of Sessions’ nomination, but it appears they likely won’t have the votes to block his confirmation. Only 51 votes are needed to confirm Cabinet nominees, and no Republicans have so far said they would oppose him. The GOP is likely to control 52 votes in the Senate next year.

Much of Sessions’ 33-page questionnaire seemed to be aimed at rebutting old allegations of racism that derailed his nomination for a federal judgeship three decades ago.

When asked to list 10 cases he litigated that he is the most proud of, Sessions discussed several that showed his advocacy on behalf of African-Americans, such as a 1983 case that went after allegations of racist behavior — such as hiring only white poll workers and limiting access to polling places for black voters.

That case, United States vs. Conecuh County, was “the first voter suppression lawsuit ever instituted” by the Justice Department, Sessions wrote. As a result of the lawsuit, political parties were required to encourage the nomination of African-American poll workers, and the election board was required to train officials in a nondiscriminatory way, the nominee noted.

“I am honored to have been a part of it,” Sessions wrote of the 1983 case.

In another case, Davis vs. Board of School Commissioners of Mobile County, Sessions noted he participated in a legal case against a school district in Alabama that a district court eventually ruled had not fully integrated despite a consent decree. And in a separate section in the questionnaire, Sessions, who turns 70 this month, noted that he sponsored the first African-American member of the Mobile (Ala.) Lions Club in the 1980s.

Meanwhile, one line in his questionnaire was particularly apt for Sessions, known as one of the chattiest senators on Capitol Hill.

“[T]hroughout my career in public service I have frequently made remarks to reporters in informal settings, including many hundreds, if not thousands, of comments to reporters in the halls of Congress,” Sessions wrote in the questionnaire, which requests a list of all interviews he has conducted with the press. “No records exist for the vast majority of these informal interviews.”

Democrats are already fighting back at the timing of the hearing, with Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) telling Grassley that the committee didn’t have all the records traditionally provided by attorney general nominees and indicating that she wanted more time to review Sessions’ “voluminous” record.

“I am more than happy to abide by the precedent of having the time run on when to have a hearing as soon as the production of materials is complete,” she wrote in a letter to Grassley. “In order to have a full and fair process, we must have all the documents responsive to the Committee questionnaire.”