Topeka ? A Kansas Senate committee is having a hearing this week on Gov. Sam Brownback’s appointment of a new judge to the state Court of Appeals.

The Judiciary Committee plans to convene Wednesday for testimony on the nomination of Kathryn Gardner of Topeka to the state’s second-highest court. The committee’s agenda says the hearing could continue Thursday and a vote is possible then.

The Republican governor named Gardner to the appeals court to fill a vacancy created last year by Brownback’s elevation of then-Judge Caleb Stegall to the Kansas Supreme Court.

Gardner has been U.S. Senior Judge Sam Crow’s law clerk since 2000 and was an attorney in private practice with a Wichita law firm for 12 years before that. She also writes cowboy poetry.