WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The judge in the criminal trial of a woman accused of running a large-scale prostitution ring around Washington has appointed an attorney who helped represent Monica Lewinsky in the impeachment proceedings against President Clinton.

Preston Burton, now with the law firm Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliff, also represented espionage defendants Aldrich Ames of the CIA and Robert Hanssen of the FBI.

His latest client, Deborah Jeane Palfrey, is fighting a multiple-count racketeering and money-laundering indictment. Prosecutors contend a company she ran for more than a dozen years was an illegal enterprise involving high-priced call girls and illicit sex.

U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler named Burton in an order filed Monday morning, replacing public defender A.J. Kramer.

When asked for reaction, Burton told CNN he has no special expertise in handling a sex case, except that he has "dealt with matters of a sensitive nature, as with the espionage cases, and in terms of this case which includes sensitive matters."

He noted that he also "was a prosecutor in that courthouse," in his time as an assistant U.S. attorney in the District of Columbia.