WASHINGTON — Eric Holder Jr., President-elect Barack Obama's pick for attorney general, brings to his confirmation hearing next week a dream resume and a bull's-eye target with his picture in the middle.

Holder will get a Republican grilling before the Senate Judiciary Committee Jan. 15. Critics challenge his role in Clinton administration pardons while he was the No. 2 Justice Department official, as well as his failure to recommend an independent investigation of fundraising by then-Vice President Al Gore.

For conservative Republicans, there's a significance to the challenge that goes far beyond any single nominee: Holder is the liberal face of nominees to come as Obama remakes the federal judiciary, and possibly the Supreme Court.

Republicans, even more deeply in minority status in the new Congress, also want to show they can remain relevant in a Democrat-dominated era. The GOP message: We have enough votes under Senate rules to stop a nomination with a filibuster, so send us centrists, not liberals.

Democrats have their own messages to send in the Holder hearings. He'll be the savior of a Justice Department wracked by Republican scandals. He'll reverse the policies of President George W. Bush's department: No more mistreatment of foreign detainees, no waterboarding, no political firings of U.S. attorneys and no warrantless wiretaps of U.S. citizens

GOP aides, who are not authorized to be quoted by name, said some senators agree with former White House political director Karl Rove that the hearings will lay down a marker.

Rove said Republicans will give special scrutiny to the Holder nomination, especially due to his advisory role in Bill Clinton's pardon of fugitive financier Marc Rich _ whose wife was a major Democratic donor.

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Rove said in a December television interview that the nomination is "going to be carefully examined, if for no other reason than people want to lay down markers that that kind of behavior is inappropriate."

A Senate Republican aide involved in the hearings said in reference to future nominees: "Others will come before the Judiciary Committee and this is the first statement. If we allow ourselves to get rolled here, we're not doing our jobs." The aide spoke on condition of anonymity because staff members aren't authorized to be quoted by name.

Republicans haven't said they'll ultimately vote against the nominee, and conservative Republican Orrin Hatch recently commented, "I like Eric Holder."

Holder's resume uniquely qualifies him to be attorney general. He was a Justice Department prosecutor of corrupt politicians, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, a judge in the nation's capital and the deputy attorney general under Clinton. He's now a partner in a major law firm.

But supporters are taking no chances.

Civil rights, anti-poverty and law-enforcement groups who support Holder are holding news conferences with Democratic senators and keeping up a steady stream of endorsement letters to the Judiciary Committee.

Democratic members of the Judiciary Committee held two news conferences in two days to support Holder _ on Wednesday with civil rights, anti-poverty and women's groups; and Thursday with law enforcement organizations.

"I guarantee this: Eric Holder is going to be confirmed in the end," Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., said Thursday while appearing with the police organizations. Leahy, the committee chairman, will preside over the hearing.

At this point, "There's no evidence of a campaign to stop confirmation," said Wade Henderson, president and chief executive officer of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights.

But this week the Judiciary Committee's top Republican, Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, said that "aside from these qualifications on Mr. Holder's resume, there is also the issue of character."

Specter said that to get his support, Holder must give satisfactory explanations of several matters:

_His statement that he was "neutral leaning towards favorable" on the Rich pardon.

_Testimony several years ago by Rich's attorney that Holder advised him to go straight to the White House rather than follow the regular procedure through the Justice Department's pardon attorney.

_Whether Holder, as the top adviser to then-Attorney General Janet Reno, yielded to the Clinton administration's wishes when Reno declined to appoint an independent counsel to investigate fundraising by then-Vice President Al Gore.

_Holder's role in reducing sentences for members of the FALN, a Puerto Rican nationalist group that was responsible for bombings, kidnappings and other events that resulted in six deaths and numerous injuries from 1974 to 1983.

Holder already has apologized for the Rich pardon, saying it was a mistake. And he did recommend that the Justice Department allow Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr to expand an investigation into Clinton's sexual relationship with White House intern Monica Lewinsky.

Leahy said the Republican decision to target Holder "all started when Rove went on TV to say this is a person we should go after. Some are so used to taking marching orders they can't get out of the habit."

As for the Rich pardon, Leahy said, those who followed the issue "blame Bill Clinton. ... They don't blame Eric Holder."

Specter, known for his independence and serious study of judiciary issues, is less an ideologue than his conservative colleagues.

"This guy has serious questions to answer," he said in an interview. "I'm not flexing political muscles."