Attorney General William Barr announced on Thursday that he would appoint Timothy Shea, a former assistant U.S. attorney in Virginia, as the interim U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia. The Associated Press was the first to report the news.

Timothy Shea is currently a senior counselor in Barr’s office, and is one of his closest confidants, per the AP. He has helped Barr oversee changes in the Federal Bureau of Prisons following the death of Jeffrey Epstein in custody at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York, the outlet reports.

Shea is coming in to replace current U.S. Attorney in D.C. Jessie Liu, 46, whom President Donald Trump recently tapped to become the undersecretary for terrorism and financial crimes at the Treasury Department. Liu has served in her post in D.C. for about two years.

Before she was nominated for her new role in the Treasury Department, Liu withdrew her name from consideration to be the associate attorney general of the United States, the third-top job at the Justice Department. Liu needed to secure Senate confirmation for the post, but she was facing criticism from Republican senators for her past involvement with the National Association of Women Lawyers, which supports abortion rights.

Liu is also subject to confirmation by the Senate for her new job as undersecretary for terrorism and financial crimes. Her last day as the USAO for D.C. is Friday.

The U.S. Attorney’s office for the District of Columbia is the largest in the country, with more than 300 prosecutors working there. It’s also unique in that it oversees prosecution for local, as well as federal, crimes. The USAO for D.C. handles a breadth of different cases in the city, including homicides, drug cases, bribery charges, and others (by contrast, the city’s Attorney General, an elected office, handles juvenile and some adult misdemeanor crimes). Federally, it prosecutes human trafficking crimes, fraud, and terrorism, among other things.

The D.C. office also handles some of the most nationally notable cases, including those referred from former special prosecutor Robert Mueller. Right now the office is overseeing a grand jury investigation into former FBI Director Andrew McCabe, who may have lied to federal investigators about leaking information to the media. Cases of contempt from Congress tend to go to the USAO in D.C.

Shea is originally from Boston, and has served as an associate deputy attorney general, an assistant U.S. attorney, and counselor to the attorney general. He also worked in private practice for 20 years as counsel for Bingham McCutchen and Morgan Lewis.

Shea’s “reputation as a fair prosecutor, skillful litigator, and excellent manager is second-to-none, and his commitment to fighting violent crime and the drug epidemic will greatly benefit the city of Washington,” Barr said in a statement Thursday. “I would also like to express my gratitude to Jessie Liu, who has served with distinction as U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia since 2017, and has been nominated to a new role at the Department of Treasury.”