An Atlanta attorney's stock on President Donald Trump's legal team appears to be rising, even as several high-powered Washington, D.C., lawyers have passed on joining the president's lineup.

Andrew Ekonomou, a former prosecutor now working in private practice, will take on a more prominent role in Trump's representation, Trump attorney Jay Sekulow told Reuters late Tuesday. Ekonomou has worked as senior counsel at Sekulow's American Center for Law and Justice.

Ekonomou is one of several attorneys with ties to Sekulow's ACLJ who are working on the president's behalf in relation to special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia probe. Sekulow has previously said Trump's private lawyers were being paid through Sekulow's private firm, the Constitutional Litigation and Advocacy Group.

In 2016, Ekonomou and Sekulow worked together as special assistant prosecutors for Brunswick District Attorney Jackie Johnson in a Georgia Supreme Court case, beating back a First Amendment challenge to a state law banning sexually explicit online contact with minors.

A 1974 Emory University law graduate, Ekonomou prosecuted securities cases for the Georgia attorney general, then served in the U.S. Attorney's Office in Atlanta, where he headed the white-collar fraud division, ran the criminal divisions and served a stint as interim U.S. attorney.

In 1983 he went into private practice and became well-known for work as a receiver. One judge appointed him in 1994 to take over an infamous nude dancing establishment, the Gold Club, and run the company while it was being sold.

Georgia U.S. Sen. Max Cleland, a Democrat, recommended Ekonomou to President Bill Clinton for a federal judgeship in Atlanta in 1997. He was predicted to have an easy confirmation, and Ekonomou said then that the position would be “a jewel in the crown” of his career. But Clinton never nominated Ekonomou, who withdrew his name from consideration after 15 months in limbo.

Ekonomou's reported ascension to a more central role on the president's legal lineup comes as the team has openly struggled to find attorneys who are willing and able to work for Trump.

The president took to Twitter on Sunday to explain the challenges, and insisted, “I am very happy with my existing team.” But the changes just keep coming. Attorneys Joseph diGenova and his wife Victoria Toensing appeared to have signed onto Trump's private legal team last week but then cited conflicts preventing them from doing so.

The tumult reached a new pitch following the departure of John Dowd, Trump's top lawyer in the Mueller investigation, last week. After Dowd exited, speculation that White House counsel Don McGahn wanted to leave government to return to Jones Day abounded too.

Several lawyers and Big Law firms have publicly rejected working for the president. Earlier this week, Winston & Strawn co-chair Dan Webb and D.C.-based partner Tom Buchanan also cited conflicts in publicly rebuffing the president, and Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher's Theodore Olson appeared on cable television to explain his decision to avoid the “chaos” swirling around Trump.

Ekonomou is no stranger to upheaval himself. Several years ago he and his law partner, Michael Lambros, were at the center of a controversy over their role as specially appointed prosecutors overseeing criminal and civil actions against the owners and operators of businesses accused of allowing illegal gambling on coin-operated machines.

The lawyers were hired by several Middle and South Georgia district attorneys who netted millions of dollars in forfeited money and property. The practice came under scrutiny when defense lawyers protested that the lawyers were effectively acting as “contingency fee” prosecutors, whose forfeitures were incentivized to rake in as much as possible.

In 2012 the Georgia Legislature made contingency fee prosecutions illegal, mandating that special prosecutors be paid on an hourly rate instead. But a challenge to the use of civil forfeiture to go after landlords and store managers through civil forfeiture was upheld by the Georgia Supreme Court that year following Ekonomou's successful argument before the justices.

Ekonomou did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday about his work for the president.