By Chris Prentice

NEW YORK The head of the U.S. Justice Department's team in Washington tasked with prosecuting market manipulation and fraud has left the agency to join a law firm focused on business litigation.

Avi Perry, who has led the Fraud Section's market integrity and major frauds team for two years, has joined the Washington office of Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan LLP. Perry will be co-chair of the firm's securities litigation and commodities and derivatives practices, Quinn Emanuel said in a statement.

He left the Justice Department in early October and starts at Quinn Emanuel on Monday.

While at the U.S. Attorney's Office in Connecticut, Perry took on the 2018 prosecution of a former UBS metals trader accused of market manipulation. A jury acquitted the trader but the case launched Perry's career at Main Justice.

Perry joined the DOJ's Fraud Section in 2018 and led a series of high-profile prosecutions resulting in the convictions of 12 bankers at Wall Street financial institutions on spoofing, fraud, and market manipulation charges, Quinn Emanuel said.

That work included cases against former employees of some of the world's largest financial institutions, including JPMorgan Chase & Co and Deutsche Bank.

Perry said he felt fortunate to "have played a part in advancing white-collar criminal enforcement."

(Reporting by Chris Prentice; editing by Mark Heinrich)