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The emerging bill is expected to be far narrower than the sweeping law enforcement overhaul that Democrats have proposed and far short of what civil rights leaders say is necessary, but its very existence reflects a personal and political journey for Mr. Scott and his view of what can reasonably become law.

“We can all sense the opportunity that is before us,” he said on the Senate floor on Tuesday. “More than at any time I can remember, people of all ages and races are standing up together for the idea that Lady Justice must be blind.”

Friends and colleagues say Mr. Scott’s thinking on matters of race actually began to shift much earlier, in 2015, after his hometown, Charleston, confronted two tragedies in quick succession: the shooting by a white police officer of an unarmed black man, Walter Scott, and then the massacre by a white supremacist of nine black churchgoers as they prayed at Emanuel A.M.E. Church. Now, Republicans are looking to Mr. Scott, 54, to be the party’s leading voice in Congress’s first major debate about policing in a quarter-century, injecting an authoritative conservative voice — who, as he might put it, also happens to be African-American — into the mix.

“He has a particular strength in this moment that other people don’t have,” said Mark Sanford, a former congressman and governor of South Carolina who served alongside Mr. Scott. “It’s one thing for a white guy to stand up. It’s a very different thing for a black man to stand up and say, ‘Well, let me tell you about my personal experience.’”

Mr. Scott, who is frequently described as an eternal optimist guided by his faith, has an exceedingly difficult task. He is trying to balance calls from police unions who are resisting changes and civil rights groups that are clamoring for it, as well as conservative members of his own party and liberals like Senator Cory Booker, Democrat of New Jersey and the only other black man in the Senate. He has been quietly keeping Mr. Trump abreast of his work.