The U.S. Senate approved President Obama’s nomination of James Comey as the new Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Director, Monday, July 29.

According to USA Today, the senate voted 93-1 to confirm Comey, 52, who served as deputy attorney general under President George W. Bush and earned bipartisan support for his 2004 role in scuttling efforts in the Bush White House to pursue a domestic surveillance program that was deemed illegal by the Justice Department, the article says.

Comey also testified during his confirmation hearing that he views water-boarding as torture and that he advocated against it during his previous tenure.

He also broadly defended the gathering of metadata by the NSA as a valuable counter-terrorism tool, but he says he is unaware of current programs’ details, as revealed by NSA contractor Edward Snowden, the article says.

The FBI director serves a fixed, 10-year term, but President Obama received Senate approval to extend Robert Mueller’s term for an additional two years in 2011.