Cravath, Swaine & Moore announced Thursday that corporate partner and deputy presiding partner C. Allen Parker will become the firm’s presiding partner in January and that the man who currently holds that title, Evan Chesler, will move into the newly created position of firm chairman.

Parker, who joined Cravath in 1984 and rose to partner six years later, has worked his way through the firm’s leadership ranks since then. He managed the corporate department’s associates from 2001 to 2004, led the department from 2009 to 2010, and became deputy presiding partner in January 2007, when Chesler succeeded litigator Robert Joffe in the firm’s top management post.

As deputy presiding partner, Parker has helped Chesler, who maintains an active and high-profile litigation practice, run Cravath’s day-to-day operations. Prior to 2006, the firm did not typically name a deputy presiding partner until closer to a leadership transition, according to an article in sibling publication New York Law Journal. The firm said at that time that Chesler needed a second-in-command sooner than usual because of his busy trial schedule.

Parker will become the firm’s fifteenth presiding partner, according to a press release Cravath issued Thursday. Over the past several decades, leaders have rotated through the firm’s top position in terms ranging in length from three years to 19 years, with Joffe’s predecessor, Samuel Butler, serving the longest.

Butler, who stepped down as presiding partner in 1999, was the driving force behind lowering Cravath’s retirement age from 70 to 65, The American Lawyer reported in 2006. The firm’s retirement policy also dictates that presiding partners step down at age 63, an age Chesler will reach next month. (Butler retired in 2003 and has been special counsel at the firm since 2004; Joffe died in January 2010 and was recognized later that year as an American Lawyer Lifetime Achiever).

Cravath’s incoming and outgoing presiding partners both are responsible for key client relationships at the 193-year-old law firm. Chesler has represented American Express, DuPont, IBM, JPMorgan Chase, Merck, Qualcomm, and Xerox, among others. Maintaining those relationships will continue to be an important part of his role as chairman, according to Cravath’s release.

Parker, 57, specializes in banking and finance work for clients that include JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, DreamWorks Animation, Covenant House, and Permira. Outside of his practice, Parker sits on the boards for his alma mater, Columbia University School of Law, the National Humanities Center, and the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. Neither Chesler nor Parker were granting interview requests Thursday.

Cravath saw its gross revenue dip by roughly 4 percent to $568 million in 2011, making it the fifty-first highest-grossing law firm in the nation, according to The American Lawyer‘s Am Law 100 data. The firm’s 80 partners, traditionally among the country’s best-paid lawyers, took home an average of $3.1 million last year, The Am Law 100′s fifth-highest profits-per-partner figure.

In December, Cravath led the market in awarding associate bonuses, as is often the case. The payouts of between $7,500 and $37,500 were subsequently matched, and in only a few cases topped, by firms around the country.

Cravath continues to be among the industry’s most traditional firms, compensating its lawyers via a lockstep system, eschewing lateral hiring in favor of promoting from within, and rarely seeing partners leave for other firms. (One of the few partners to depart in recent years was Jeffrey Smith, the former head of the firm’s environmental practice, who lateraled into Cravath 20 years ago and moved to Crowell & Moring in January.

The firm has lost a handful of partners in recent years to in-house legal departments at TPG Capital, Accenture, UBS, and JPMorgan Chase. In May, Cravath welcomed back Francis Barron, who left in 2010 to serve as Morgan Stanley’s top lawyer.