NEW YORK, June 13 (Reuters) - The former top civil prosecutor at the Manhattan U.S. Attorney's office will join law firm BuckleySandler, which specializes in advising financial institutions.

Andrew Schilling, 45, said on Wednesday he will be a partner at the firm's New York office starting next week. He is expected to focus on government enforcement actions.

Schilling returns to private practice after two stints as a civil prosecutor at the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York, one of the busiest offices of the Justice Department.

He helped create the office's Civil Frauds unit, which goes after civil wrongdoing, most of it stemming from the 2008 financial crisis. Since its creation in March 2010, the unit has filed 25 lawsuits resulting in over $600 million in settlements, Schilling said.

A spokeswoman for the Manhattan U.S. Attorney's office said a replacement for Schilling had not yet been named. Even in an office known for high turnover, several prosecutors have departed for private practice in the past year, such as former Deputy U.S. Attorney Boyd Johnson and prosecutors Christopher Garcia, David Leibowitz, Avi Weitzman, Jonathan Streeter, David Raskin and William Harrington.

Schilling joined the office in 1997 and eventually led its civil rights unit. In 2005, under his leadership, civil rights prosecutors launched the Hotels Initiative, a review of the compliance of 50 hotels in the Times Square area with the Americans with Disabilities Act.

After a spell at New York law firm Friedman Kaplan Seiler & Adelman, he returned to the office in March 2010 to become civil division chief under U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara.

BuckleySandler was founded in 2009 with 40 attorneys and has since grown into a 150-lawyer firm with offices in New York, Washington and Los Angeles.

(Reporting By Basil Katz)

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