President-elect Donald Trump on Tuesday named Herschel Walker, who ran unsuccessfully for a Georgia Senate seat in 2022, as his nominee for U.S. ambassador to the Bahamas.

“Herschel has served for decades as an ambassador for our nation’s youth, our men and women in the military, and athletes at home and abroad,” Trump wrote on his social media platform TruthSocial.

Walker, a Heisman Trophy winner at the University of Georgia before playing in the NFL, led a tumultuous Senate campaign as the Republican candidate in his home state of Georgia two years ago, ultimately losing in a runoff to Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock.

NBC News reported in 2022 that financial problems, micromanagement and Walker’s excesses about his past contributed to problems during his candidacy. His election campaign was rocked just a few weeks before the election when it was reported that the staunch abortion opponent had paid for a woman’s abortion in 2009.

Trump, a longtime friend of Walker’s who encouraged him to run for the Senate seat, said at the time that Walker was being “slandered and slandered.” In a 2022 interview with NBC News, Walker admitted giving a $700 check to an ex-partner but denied knowing it was for an abortion.

Walker, who campaigned alongside Trump in the 2024 presidential campaign, must be confirmed for the ambassador post by a simple majority in the Senate. Republicans will take control of the chamber in early January.

Trump has named nearly all of his Cabinet members, with a handful of them under consideration by some Senate Republicans. He has also selected several high-profile candidates for ambassadorial positions, appointing Charles Kushner, Kimberly Guilfoyle and Tom Barrack as ambassadors to France, Greece and Turkey.