Mr. Chipman, a fiery former office agent who vowed to take on the gun lobby, resigned in September after Senator Angus King, a Maine independent who sides with Democrats, spoke out against Mr. Chipman following pressure from gun owners its state and national groups.
Mr. Dettelbach, who served as U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Ohio, which includes Cleveland, Toledo and Akron, from 2009 to 2016, appears to be a less divisive figure. He is known for law enforcement, hate crime cases and voting rights investigations.
In early 2021, he said he was “interested” in leaving his post at a law firm to reclaim his old job. Officials in the Biden administration were also discussing whether Mr. Dettelbach should oversee the Justice Department’s civilian division, which defends administration policies in court, according to people familiar with the discussions.
Mr. Dettelbach, a Democrat, has never headed a national law enforcement organization and has never worked at the ATF. Ordinary agents respect and like the agency’s acting head, Marvin Richardson, according to several people who work with the bureau.
If confirmed, Mr. Dettelbach would be only the second permanent director in the last 15 years of the ATF, an undersized and underfunded agency paralyzed by the gun lobby and congressional Republicans. On Sunday, White House officials described him as an uncontroversial candidate who had been unanimously confirmed as US Attorney.
During an unsuccessful 2018 bid for Ohio Attorney General, Mr. Dettelbach, a Harvard graduate who began his career in the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division under President Bill Clinton, supported an assault weapons ban, universal background checks and tighter restrictions on gun buyers with mental health problems .
Republicans, already poring over videos and news reports from Mr. Dettelbach’s campaign, are likely to attack him for welcoming support from Everytown, a leading gun control group.