WASHINGTON -- The lead lawyer who oversaw the botched prosecution of former Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens will step down from his role as the head of the Justice Department's public integrity section, the department confirmed Wednesday.

William Welch will remain with the Justice Department but will move to a role in his native Massachusetts, said Welch's lawyer, William Taylor.

``While the ultimate result in the Stevens case has been highly disappointing professionally and personally, Bill knows that his management decisions, where permitted, comported with his own and the department's highest ethical standards,'' Taylor said.

Welch, who didn't have direct day-to-day involvement in the Stevens case, remains under two investigations for the botched government role that he and other prosecutors had in Stevens' case. The former Republican senator's indictment was part of a sweeping investigation into corruption in Alaska politics that began unraveling when defense attorneys questioned the way that prosecutors and the FBI handled witnesses and evidence in his case and others.

The Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility is pursuing its own investigation, and the U.S. district judge who's overseeing the case, Emmet Sullivan, appointed a special prosecutor to investigate irregularities in the prosecution. It's not clear whether Welch's decision to step down was the outcome of the internal Justice Department investigation.

Stevens' lead attorney, Brendan Sullivan, told the McClatchy News Service that he would have no substantive comments until the two investigations have concluded.

``I want to be fairer to the government attorneys than they were to Sen. Stevens,'' he said.

Among the first major moves that Attorney General Eric Holder made after he took office early this year was to dismiss the indictment against Stevens, effectively clearing him of his conviction last year on corruption charges.

Holder, himself a product of the public integrity section, said it was ``in the best interest of justice'' to abandon its prosecution of the 40-year Senate veteran.

Stevens, who was up for reelection at the same time as his trial, lost his seat to Sen. Mark Begich, a Democrat, a move that helped give Democrats in the Senate a 60-vote majority.

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