Nicholas McQuaid, a former federal prosecutor in Manhattan who served as a White House lawyer during the Obama presidency, has been named the acting leader of the U.S. Justice Department’s criminal division, a role that will come with oversight of the Biden administration’s early white-collar enforcement efforts and the ongoing crackdown on coronavirus-related fraud, according to people familiar with the move.

McQuaid spent more than five years as a federal prosecutor in the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York before joining the Obama White House in 2013. In 2017, McQuaid became a partner at Latham & Watkins, where he was a co-leader of the firm’s litigation and trial department in New York.