Top aluminum producer Alcoa announced on Wednesday that it has named Audrey Strauss as its new chief legal officer, chief compliance officer and corporate secretary.

Strauss has formerly served as chief appellate attorney and as chief of the fraud unit in the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York. She is currently a senior litigation partner at Fried Frank, where she will remain until she begins work at Alcoa on May 1, replacing current CLO Kurt Waldo.

Once she arrives, she will have her work cut out for her. Alcoa is tangled up in a nasty civil racketeering lawsuit with Aluminum Bahrain BSC (Alba), a company owned by the country of Bahrain. Alba claims Alcoa has been bribing officials at Alba with millions of dollars in return for inflated contracts.

Read more about Strauss's appointment and Alcoa's legal struggles in the Wall Street Journal.