Linda Singer, the District of Columbia’s top lawyer, resigned her post Monday after months of acrimony and losing turf battles with Mayor Adrian Fenty’s personal counsel.

Fenty announced Singer’s resignation Monday and appointed his counsel, Peter Nickles, as her interim replacement.

Singer, 41, was the centerpiece of the new mayor’s reform team when he plucked her from the small nonprofit Appleseed Foundation to head the $87 million agency, which is responsible for defending the city from litigation, enforcing D.C.’s child support laws, arguing for wards of the courts and protecting consumers. She had never appeared in a D.C. court before taking the job.

Singer stumbled out of the gate when she demanded firing of key staffers before taking office and then denied having done so.

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And, despite the reforming zeal which she claimed to bring to the job, Singer increasingly was a secondary player in Fenty’s administration.

Nickles, a career litigator and trusted family friend of the mayor, took over numerous day-to-day operations in the city’s legal affairs.

Nickles declined comment on Singer’s resignation.

Singer’s staff didn’t help her cause: Twice over the summer, the city was held in contempt over its youth-detention policies, her deputies continued to botch special education cases, and, in one notable instance, city lawyers were ripped for their “stunning ignorance” by a federal judge.

Fenty downplayed the controversies surrounding Singer’s tenure and defection Monday but denied that he was surprised by it.

“We very, very much appreciate the hard work of Attorney General Singer and wish her the best,” the mayor told a news conference.

U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth, a critic of the city’s lawyering, said Singer was put in an impossible position.

“They don’t have enough lawyers to handle the volume of litigation,” Lamberth told The Examiner. “The office has had a chronic understaffing problem that she couldn’t solve, either. Only the mayor and the [Disrict] Council can give them the resources they need.”

But Singer’s resignation leaves Fenty in a bind for her successor. Nickles, 69, lives in rural Virginia, and the attorney general is required to be a District resident.

And many council members associate Nickles with what they consider Fenty’s high-handed manner.

“That Peter Nickles will be interim attorney general is a mistake,” said Phil Mendelson, D-at large, chair of the council’s Judiciary Committee.

Nickles told The Examiner in an exclusive interview last week that he didn’t expect to serve out Fenty’s four-year term.

“I’m a little old,” Nickles said. “I don’t know if I’ll be around in four years.”

Examiner Staff Writer Scott McCabe contributed to this report.

bmyers@dcexaminer.com