One of Attorney General Cuomo’s top deputies is stepping in to help defend Governor Paterson against a racial discrimination suit that has dogged Mr. Paterson since his days as the Senate minority leader.

At a meeting before the judge in an effort to settle the case, Mr. Paterson was represented this week by a deputy attorney general, Leslie Leach, according to an entry on the docket. Mr. Leach, who oversees more than 300 attorneys, heads the largest division in the attorney general’s office, the one that defends the state against all lawsuits.

That he is personally attending to the case, which is being heard in U.S. District Court in Syracuse, is a signal of just how seriously Mr. Cuomo is taking the allegations, which have the potential, if proved, to embarrass the governor.

The suit was brought by a photographer, Joseph Maioriello, who worked for the state for 26 years until Mr. Paterson fired him from his post as photographer for the Democratic members of the state Senate. In a suit filed in 2005, Mr. Maioriello, who is white, alleges that Mr. Paterson, who had recently ascended to the Senate minority leader post, fired him in order to replace him with a black photographer.

One key issue at trial could be Mr. Paterson’s eyesight. Mr. Paterson is legally blind but retains some sight. In a deposition in the case, he said that because of his poor vision he “did no know for certain the race” of either Mr. Maioriello, or his replacement, J. El-Wise Noisette, who had been the photographer for a state comptroller, Carl McCall.

In an interview with the New York Post in February, Charles O’Bryne, who was chief of staff when Mr. Paterson was lieutenant governor, denied that the governor meant that statement, calling it a “Paterson quip, a joke.”

The judge overseeing the case, Norman Mordue, appears however to have taken Mr. Paterson’s statement at face value and wrote in a court decision that Mr. Paterson claims not to have known the race of either photographer.