The Justice Department is expected to name Leslie R. Caldwell, the former lead prosecutor in the Enron case, as the next head of its criminal division, according to people briefed on the decision.
Ms. Caldwell, now a defense lawyer at the firm Morgan Lewis, served as first director of the government’s Enron Task Force, running the criminal investigation of the collapsed energy giant from 2002 to 2004. She took on that role after stints as a federal prosecutor in Manhattan and San Francisco.
In returning to government service, Ms. Caldwell will assume a post vacated this year by Lanny Breuer, who led the Justice Department’s response to corporate misconduct during the financial crisis, bringing big corporate bribery and public corruption cases. He also came under criticism for a dearth of prosecutions of Wall Street executives.
Mr. Breuer returned earlier this year to Covington & Burling, where he previously spent two decades before serving in the Obama administration. Since March, Mythili Raman has served as acting head of the criminal division.
A number of lawyers were considered for the position, including Mark F. Pomerantz, a partner at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison who, as a federal prosecutor earlier in his career, served as the head of the criminal division for the United States attorney in Manhattan; and Anne Milgram, the former New Jersey attorney general.
Ms. Caldwell is on vacation and did not respond to an e-mail seeking comment. The Wall Street Journal earlier reported the news of Ms. Caldwell’s pending appointment.
A Pittsburgh native, Ms. Caldwell graduated from Penn State and received her law degree from George Washington University.
