The Department of Justice has appointed Stuart Delery to serve as acting associate attorney general, as the agency’s third-ranking post awaits a formal nomination by President Barack Obama.

Delery, who has served as head of the Justice Department's Civil Division since March 2012, will succeed Tony West, who announced this week that he would be departing the agency, effective Sept. 15. Under West’s leadership, the Justice Department achieved significant results in several areas of enforcement, extracting more than $30 billion in settlements from numerous Wall Street banks resulting from mortgage practices leading up to the financial crisis.

Last month, the Department of Justice reached an historic settlement with Bank of America totaling $16.65 billion in penalties and consumer relief—the largest civil settlement with a single corporate entity in American history—to resolve claims related to its packaging, origination, marketing, sale, structuring, and issuance of residential mortgage-backed securities and collateralized debt obligations. Other major settlements include JPMorgan’s $13 billion settlement reached in November 2013, and Citigroup’s $7 billion settlement reached in July 2014.

Picking up where West left off, Delery will be tasked with resolving the few remaining mortgage cases, including Goldman Sachs and Wells Fargo. In a prepared statement, Attorney General Eric Holder called Delery “a lawyer’s lawyer who, even as he has risen to the leadership of the department, continues to thrive in the court setting and routinely is called on to personally argue the most complex cases.”

Since joining the Civil Division, Delery has focused on cases involving national security, health and safety, and financial fraud.  He also co-chairs several working groups of the Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force established by President Obama in 2009.

Delery joined the Justice Department in January 2009 as Chief of Staff and counselor to the deputy attorney general, and later served as associate deputy attorney general. From August 2010 until March 2012, Delery served as senior counselor to the Attorney General.

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