Two months after the Department of Justice installed a career prosecutor, Benton Campbell, to serve as the interim appointee in charge of the U.S. attorney’s office in Brooklyn, the White House is interviewing candidates for the post, a source said.

The development is surprising because many lawyers in New York had speculated that the White House would let Mr. Campbell ride out the rest of President Bush’s second term as an interim appointee, and not bother to submit either his or another candidate’s name to the Senate for confirmation.

Around the country, about a third of the 93 U.S. attorney positions are held by temporary appointees such as Mr. Campbell.

With a Democrat-controlled Senate that is skeptical of Mr. Bush’s Justice Department, it is unlikely the White House would nominate a candidate for the Brooklyn position without approval from Senator Schumer, who sits on the Judiciary Committee.

One source said that Mr. Campbell is on the White House’s list of candidates being considered for the nomination, and others under consideration include two former federal prosecutors: Andrew Hruska, who is now at the law firm King & Spalding, and Chauncey Parker, who now runs an anti-narcotics trafficking program. The list is not limited to those three candidates, but further names were unavailable. Messrs. Campbell, Hruska, and Parker either could not be reached or declined to comment.

Before going into private practice, Mr. Hruska held senior positions in the Justice Department in both Brooklyn and in Washington, D.C., where he was counsel to a deputy attorney general, Larry Thompson. Mr. Parker was previously Governor Pataki’s top policy adviser on criminal justice matters, and before then had worked as a prosecutor in Manhattan.