UPDATE 1-U.S. Senate confirms Jeffrey Rosen as No. 2 Justice Department official

The U.S. Senate on Thursday confirmed Jeffrey Rosen as the No. 2 official at the Justice Department, after Attorney General William Barr recommended Rosen for the job to President Donald Trump. Rosen, who most recently served as the deputy secretary at the Department of Transportation, was confirmed along party lines by a vote of 52 to 45 in the Republican-controlled Senate.

Rosen will replace Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, whose last day at the Justice Department was on May 11. Normally the job of deputy attorney general is relatively low-profile. But that was not the case for Rosenstein, who rose to become the center of attention in May 2017 when he appointed former FBI Director Robert Mueller as special counsel to probe whether Trump's presidential campaign colluded with Russia to tilt the election in his favor.

The investigation, which concluded in March with Mueller finding insufficient evidence of a criminal conspiracy between Trump's campaign and Russia, has dogged Trump's presidency and continues to be a political lightning rod that has deeply divided Republicans and Democrats. As deputy attorney general, Rosen will oversee the day-to-day operation of an agency that employs more than 100,000 people at prosecutors' offices, federal prisons and FBI offices across the country.

Rosen has no experience as a prosecutor, a fact that Democrats have said should disqualify him from the job. (Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch and Andy Sullivan; Editing by Bernadette Baum and Jonathan Oatis)