With Jay Clayton’s nomination to become director of national intelligence, the Manhattan federal prosecutors he has overseen for the past year are bracing for what’s next.

Clayton, who came to the powerful job of Manhattan U.S. attorney with no prior prosecutorial experience, drew skepticism when he first arrived on the scene, his outsider status compounded by his chumminess with President Donald Trump. At an office that has long prized its independence from Justice Department headquarters and the White House, Clayton’s occasional golf outings with the president made prosecutors squirm.

Now, with his impending departure, the Southern District of New York is once again on edge about who might lead the storied office during a time of upheaval and uncertainty at the Justice Department.

“There’s a lot of trepidation about it,” a former SDNY prosecutor said, describing assistant U.S. attorneys as being on “pins and needles” about Clayton’s successor.

“People have begrudgingly accepted Clayton at the office because they’re looking around and see” the alternatives, the person said.

Clayton held a meeting at the office late Thursday afternoon after Trump’s announcement, according to two people familiar with the matter, but didn’t appear to address his replacement. Names being floated in SDNY circles Thursday included Sean Buckley, the current deputy U.S. attorney; Nicolas Roos, co-chief of the office’s securities and commodities fraud task force; and James McDonald, one of Trump’s personal lawyers who is close with Clayton. McDonald is a former Manhattan prosecutor.

A spokesperson for SDNY declined to comment.

Despite any misgivings about Clayton, the widespread sentiment in the office was that Manhattan was lucky it escaped the fate of other districts like the Eastern District of Virginia or the Northern District of New York, where Trump has installed inexperienced loyalists who have botched cases or been disqualified. At SDNY, the former prosecutor said, “the absence of catastrophe has allowed people to mostly be able to do their jobs.” The former prosecutor, like others mentioned in this article, was granted anonymity to discuss private conversations within the office.

Still, Clayton’s tenure has had hiccups.

He inflamed nerves when prosecutors learned that in the weeks before he arrived, he had privately advised the interim head of the office, Danielle Sassoon, to follow DOJ’s order to  drop the criminal case against then-New York City Mayor Eric Adams, rather than resign.

And Clayton did little to help morale when the Trump administration fired one of the office’s star assistant U.S. attorneys, Maurene Comey, daughter of former FBI director and longtime Trump foe James Comey, without explanation. Though widely believed not to be Clayton’s decision, many in the office faulted him for failing to stand up for her.

But Clayton won supporters with his affable nature and impressive legal resume, which includes a long career at prominent white-shoe firm Sullivan & Cromwell, where he represented major financial institutions, and the chairmanship of the Securities and Exchange Commission.

And in recent months, Clayton not only guided the Southern District of New York through a trying period in which virtually every prosecutor was saddled with the time-consuming task of reviewing documents from the massive Jeffrey Epstein investigative file, but also oversaw a string of high-profile and novel prosecutions.

In January, his prosecutors charged deposed Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro with an array of crimes including narco-terrorism, unveiling perhaps the most prominent criminal case in the country.

And since April, Clayton has been pursuing insider trading cases centered on prediction-market bets, some of the first in the country to tackle an area critics see as ripe for prosecution.

But with just 14 months in the top job, Clayton had a limited window to make his mark. “It's not surprising that any U.S. attorney couldn't build a lasting legacy in a year,” said Perry Carbone, the former chief of the criminal division. “And it's even less surprising that they couldn't do it in an environment where the Justice Department exerts so much control over the day-to-day workings of the office.”

Though Clayton’s nomination took the Manhattan office by surprise Thursday, word has circulated for months in SDNY circles that he has had his eye on a Cabinet-level position, buzz fueled by his regular appearances on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” program.

Though prosecutors, particularly Manhattan U.S. attorneys, traditionally go out of their way to sidestep discussing anything even vaguely political, Clayton has used the segments to dismiss concerns about Trump’s “anti-weaponization fund” and float the possibility of fraud in Los Angeles’ recent mayoral primary.