Suffolk County District Attorney Daniel F. Conley this week promoted Assistant District Attorney David Deakin to the new position of senior counsel to the district attorney and named two experienced lawyers to oversee drug prosecutions in Boston, Chelsea, Revere, and Winthrop.

Deakin, a Suffolk prosecutor since 1996 and an assistant district attorney in Norfolk County before that, will maintain his current title as chief of the DA’s Family Protection and Sexual Assault Bureau but will also work directly with the district attorney to chart the overall legal operation of the office, Conley said.

“David Deakin is one of the finest attorneys the Commonwealth has to offer,” Conley said. “His ethical standards, command of the law, and strategic prowess are second to none. We’re extremely lucky to have him as a member of the office and the public safety community.”

Deakin has prosecuted countless cases of child abuse, sexual assault, domestic violence, and homicide. In 2009, he tried and convicted Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter, the German national who posed for years as “Clark Rockefeller” and sparked an international manhunt when he kidnapped his young daughter during a 2008 post-divorce custody visit in Boston. In 2006, he successfully prosecuted a home invasion and rape case that presented unique challenges because the defendant shared a DNA profile with his identical twin brother.

After graduating from Harvard Law School in 1991, Deakin served for a year as a law clerk to former Supreme Judicial Court Justice Ruth Abrams. He holds undergraduate degrees from Williams College and Oxford University.

Conley also named Assistant District Attorney Macy Lee chief of the office’s Narcotics and Asset Forfeiture Unit and Assistant District Attorney Allison Callahan as its deputy chief. A six-person team of lawyers and civilian staffers, the unit investigates and prosecutes major drug trafficking cases; lends legal and strategic assistance to prosecutors in Suffolk County’s nine district courts; and undertakes the civil forfeiture of money, vehicles, and other assets seized as the proceeds of drug distribution.

Lee comes to the Narcotics Unit from Conley’s Appeals Division, where she helped to shape Massachusetts case law and defended convictions in a host of notorious cases, including the near-fatal stabbing of Boston Celtics player Paul Pierce at a downtown nightclub in 2000 and the murder of Roxbury shopkeeper Jorge Fidalgo in 2001 for a day’s worth of cash receipts.

“Macy Lee brings a wealth of experience to a key position in the office,” Conley said. “She recognizes that narcotics cases don’t just involve drugs – they often involve guns, violence, and organized offenders whose tactics can shift on an almost daily basis. She’s proven herself time and again, both in court and in written arguments, and she’s more than equal to this task.”

Before coming to the Suffolk DA’s office, Lee was a prosecutor in the Major Felony Unit at the Cuyahoga County Prosecutor’s office in Cleveland, Ohio, where she prosecuted narcotics offenses and other cases; an assistant attorney general assigned to the Massachusetts Attorney General’s Government Bureau; and an associate attorney at private law firms in Boston and Cleveland.

Callahan began her career as a Suffolk prosecutor in 2004 in Chelsea District Court. In 2006, while assigned to Dorchester District Court, she convicted a defendant under the state’s witness intimidation law for photographing an undercover police officer in a courthouse. As a result of that case, the Massachusetts Appeals Court clarified the law and ruled that a person’s actions need not be overtly threatening to constitute intimidation.

“Allison Callahan has excelled in every assignment she’s held, but her work in the Narcotics Unit has been exemplary,” Conley said. “Her research and litigation skills, together with her strong work on narcotics and related cases, made her the natural choice for a leadership position in the office.”

Callahan was soon promoted to the DA’s Major Felony Bureau, where she prosecuted a broad array of violent crimes, and then the unit she will now help to lead. As a line narcotics prosecutor, she took on the case of a former South Boston man who fled cocaine trafficking charges in 1988 only to be apprehended in Virginia in 2009, securing a state prison term for the defendant decades after the fact. Her amicus brief in a 2010 Barnstable County drug case is credited as the foundation for the SJC’s recent ruling that district court judges and clerks have the authority to issue search warrants for property located anywhere in the Commonwealth, and not just within the jurisdiction of their courts or counties.

“They’ve dedicated their careers to public service when they could have chosen private gain,” Conley said of Deakin, Lee, and Callahan. “I’m deeply grateful to each of them for accepting these new and challenging assignments.”