The U.S. Senate on Wednesday confirmed Multnomah County Circuit Judge Karin J. Immergut to fill a federal district judge’s vacancy in Oregon.

The Senate conducted a voice vote in support of Immergut, who had the support of both Oregon senators.

Immergut, 58, has presided over more than 250 criminal and civil trials in state court since former Gov. Ted Kulongoski appointed her to a Multnomah County Circuit judge’s seat in 2009. That followed her six years as Oregon’s U.S. attorney, appointed by former President George W. Bush.

A voice vote is fairly unusual but demonstrated the bipartisan support for Immergut, said Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond Law School. Immergut is one of 19 federal district nominees up for confirmation this week by the Senate before it adjourns until Sept. 9.

Immergut previously served two years as an assistant U.S. attorney in Oregon, assigned to the fraud unit and gun violence reduction initiative. Before that, she worked as a Multnomah County prosecutor, handling financial fraud, elder fraud and identity theft cases.

She took a leave of absence from her Multnomah County deputy district attorney's job to work in the Office of Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr. Her key grand jury interviews of Monica Lewinsky, which painstakingly unraveled the details of Lewinsky's sexual encounters with President Bill Clinton, ultimately helped determine that Clinton had lied under oath.

In response to written questions from U.S. senators about information from the Starr report leaked to the press and the explicit details included in the report, Immergut responded that she never leaked any information to the press and that it was Starr’s decision about what details to include in his report about Clinton’s sexual contacts with Lewinsky.

“I did feel it was important during the course of the investigation to ask Ms. Lewinsky very detailed information about those contacts because the perjury allegation was dependent on the details of the President’s testimony,’’ Immergut wrote.

She began her legal career as a litigation associate at Covington & Burling in Washington, D.C. She also served as a federal prosecutor earlier in her career in California, where she was chief of the training section and deputy chief of the narcotics and money laundering section in California's central district.

Immergut earned her bachelor's degree from Amherst College and her law degree from the Boalt Hall School of Law at the University of California at Berkeley.

Immergut was one of seven nominees announced a year ago for federal district judge’s seats, President Donald J. Trump’s 15th wave of judicial nominees as president.

She’ll fill the seat vacated by U.S. District Judge Anna J. Brown, who assumed senior status on July 27, 2017.

Oregon's Democratic senators, Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley, said the nomination of Immergut reflected the bipartisan state judicial committee's decision that she was among "the highest-qualified applicants, and exemplifies how the judicial selection process should work.''

-- Maxine Bernstein

Email at mbernstein@oregonian.com

Follow on Twitter @maxoregonian

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