June 2(Reuters) - Hagan Scotten, a former U.S.

prosecutor who resigned after the Justice Department ordered its

lawyers to drop a criminal corruption case against Democratic

New York Mayor Eric Adams, has joined Hueston Hennigan as a

partner, the firm said Monday.

Scotten was one of several career prosecutors who resigned

in February after then-Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove

ordered the U.S. Attorney's office in Manhattan to dismiss the

case against Adams.

Bove had asserted in a memo to the office that the case was

impeding Adams' ability to aid President Donald Trump's

crackdown on illegal immigration.

Scotten, one of the lead prosecutors in the Adams case, told

Bove in his resignation letter there was no valid reason to

justify dismissing the charges and that he would never comply

with the order to do so.

"From my perspective, what they were asking me to do, I

simply could not do as an officer of the court," Scotten said in

an interview.

A Justice Department spokesperson did not immediately

respond to a request for comment.

A U.S. judge dismissed the corruption charges against Adams

in April, even as he said the Trump administration's argument

that the charges were hindering Adams' help with an immigration

crackdown "smacks of a bargain."

Reuters reported in April that all five of the

Manhattan-based U.S. prosecutors who were originally involved in

the Adams case, including former Acting U.S. Attorney Danielle

Sassoon, had resigned in protest, along with at least six career

attorneys in Washington who were also pressured to drop the

case.

Before serving as a federal prosecutor, Scotten was a clerk

for U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts and for

Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh, a fellow conservative, when

Kavanaugh was at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.

Scotten also helped prosecute Charles McGonigal, the former

leader of the FBI's counterintelligence division in New York who

pleaded guilty to working with Oleg Deripaska, a Russian

oligarch sanctioned by the United States. McGonigal was

sentenced to four years in prison in December 2023.

He also prosecuted Lev Parnas, a onetime associate of

Trump's former personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani. Parnas was found

guilty in October 2021 of violating U.S. campaign finance laws

during the 2018 elections.

Scotten said he chose to join the Hueston Hennigan firm

after determining it "is the kind of firm that never backs away

from a fight."

The firm has handled high-profile disputes for clients

including Amazon and Boeing ( BA ). In March, it successfully defended

Disney ( DIS ) in a copyright dispute over its hit film "Moana."