The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency said Wednesday that it has hired a longtime litigator with the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia to be a senior official in the banking agency's legal department.

Brian P. Hudak, formerly the civil division chief for the D.C. U.S. Attorney's Office, joined the OCC this month as deputy chief counsel. In this role, he will advise OCC Chief Counsel Adam Cohen and other senior officials on issues that include management and oversight of litigation, enforcement and internal matters, the OCC said.

He succeeds Patricia Grady, a veteran OCC official who had been its deputy chief counsel since 2022. She recently retired from the agency.

"Brian brings nearly two decades of successful litigation and enforcement experience at the U.S. Attorney's Office to the OCC," Comptroller of the Currency Jonathan Gould, the agency's top official, said in a Wednesday statement.

"He will provide meaningful direction to advance our supervisory and regulatory mission while ensuring that our regulated institutions are held accountable for their compliance with statutory and regulatory requirements," Gould added.

Hudak is the latest in a string of additions to the OCC's upper ranks under Gould, who took the reins in July and has reorganized key internal operations at the agency while steering it in a more crypto-friendly, deregulatory direction.

Cohen, a former Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom LLP partner, was among the first of these additions, taking over in August as head of the OCC's legal department. Will Giles, a former Cravath Swaine & Moore LLP corporate attorney, joined the following month as principal deputy chief counsel, to whom Hudak will report.

In U.S. House testimony this week, Gould pointed to restructuring and staffing as an area of focus for the agency. Its core functions "degraded" during the Biden administration and needed "fixing," he told lawmakers, with better recruitment among other things.

Hudak's arrival at the OCC follows an 18-year career with the U.S. Attorney's Office in Washington, D.C., where he handled numerous defense matters involving the federal government and helped secure more than $1 billion in recoveries in civil enforcement cases, according to the agency.

He most recently headed up its civil division, supervising the litigation of thousands of civil defensive and affirmative cases. Before taking on that role, he was deputy civil chief for the U.S. Attorney's Office and has also served as a line assistant U.S. attorney in its civil division, the OCC said.

"Brian has received numerous recognitions for his outstanding work on behalf of the United States, and the OCC is fortunate to have a leader with his background, skills and expertise in our legal department," Gould said Wednesday.

Earlier in his career, Hudak was an associate in New York at what is now Mayer Brown LLP. He received his law degree from the Washington & Lee University School of Law and has a bachelor's degree in computer science from the University of Virginia.