The Senate on Thursday confirmed Jeffrey Clark to be the Trump administration's top environment attorney at the Department of Justice, in a 52-45 vote.

Clark, who is currently a partner at Kirkland & Ellis, will now assume the role assistant attorney general for the Justice Department's Environment and Natural Resources Division. In that role, he will defend Trump administration policies issued by the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Interior in the courts.

“He is a complex trial and appellate litigator with especially deep experience in administrative law, cutting across dozens of statutes and numerous agencies,” Trump said when he nominated Clark last year. Clark previously worked in the Justice Department’s Environment and Natural under Former President George W. Bush from 2001 to 2005.

The Chamber of Commerce applauded the Trump's pick, and said in May that Clark's confirmation is needed to "provide the Justice Department with key leadership and experience as it prepares to address critical litigation on a number of important energy and environmental topics.”

Industry groups supported Clark with a similar statement in June that noted his experience in environmental law through his involvement with the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and the National Environmental Policy Act.

Democrats have been critical of Clark, specifically his representation of BP in litigation over the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010.

“After reviewing Mr. Clark’s record and asking him questions during his hearing, I believe he’s not the person to fill this job,” Senate Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said ahead of his committee confirmation vote in August 2017. She also challenged Clark’s 2014 statement in which he called climate change “contestable.”

“I think that I stand by it because there are clearly scientists and private entities who disagree with federal regulation in that area that as a positive prediction they would contest those issues and several bodies have,” Clark told Feinstein at the hearing.

“My concern is that you have been the operative of these powerful interests for so long that your entry into the Department of Justice is now a capture of that department by these interests, that you will in fact be loyal to these interests rather than to popular government when you are in that position,” Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., said then.

Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, said Clark’s personal opinions on climate change should not be relevant to whether he can defend federal agencies in the court of law.

“I think it needs to be pointed out that a nominee’s policy views, if they’re going to do their job, are not relevant for the simple reason that these lawyers are responsible for defending the positions of their government client just like they would a private client and they have to enforce the laws passed by the Congress,” Grassley said in Clark's defense.

In a series of tweets Thursday before the vote, Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said that Clark is the “wrong person for the job.”

