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District Attorney Robert T. Johnson and his wife, Justice Dianne T. Renwick, at the Bronx Democratic judicial nominating convention on Thursday.Credit Emon Hassan for The New York Times

Bronx Democratic power brokers executed a series of political moves on Thursday night, nominating District Attorney Robert T. Johnson for a judgeship and giving his spot on the November ballot to Justice Darcel D. Clark of the state appellate court.

Delegates at a judicial nominating convention voted unanimously to give Mr. Johnson, the longtime top prosecutor for the borough, the nod for an open Supreme Court position, as he had requested last week. They also nominated five others from the Bronx for judgeships, including Dianne T. Renwick, Mr. Johnson’s wife.  

Later, the executive board of the Bronx Democratic County Committee, meeting behind closed doors, voted to give Mr. Johnson’s spot on the ballot for district attorney to Justice Clark, a former prosecutor in Mr. Johnson’s office who has close ties to the Assembly speaker, Carl E. Heastie, the most powerful politician in the borough.

In a Democratic stronghold like the Bronx, a nomination from the party committee amounts to an appointment.

Mr. Johnson, 67, who was sailing to re-election with no opposition, waited until after the Sept. 10 primary to say he wanted to seek a judgeship. In such cases, state law allows the county party leaders to choose his replacement on the ballot.

Though often used in New York, the maneuver has drawn outrage from government watchdog groups, who said Mr. Johnson and party leaders effectively cut voters out of the decision.

The county chairman, Assemblyman Marcos Crespo, has denied reports that he colluded with Mr. Johnson to engineer his exit in a way that ensured the next district attorney would be beholden to the party machine. Mr. Heastie has also said he was unaware of Mr. Johnson’s plan to bow out.

In nominating Mr. Johnson on Thursday, Mr. Crespo defended the process. “Never will we ever cross a line where we will do something we are not supposed to do,” he said. “While some can question what we do and how we do it, at the end of the day, what I encourage all of those to do is to look at the integrity, the character, and the skills and the experience of the men and women nominated tonight.”

As he accepted the nomination, Mr. Johnson gave an impassioned defense — not only of his tenure in office, but also of his late decision to step down as district attorney. He said that his decision had been honest. Answering his critics, he cited advice he said he had often given: “Don’t resign a job without a job. If I had resigned before this convention tonight, I would not have a job.”

“I think that after 40 years of public service that I deserve to be able to continue to serve the community,” he said.

Mr. Crespo said that Justice Clark was the only candidate nominated for the district attorney’s position during the executive session. She spoke to the committee and left without talking with reporters.

A former prosecutor and judge, Mr. Johnson was first elected in 1988 in a contested race with the backing of Democratic leaders, becoming the first black district attorney in the state. He has been easily re-elected since then.

As a prosecutor, he has earned a reputation for not aggressively attacking political corruption in the borough, and the prosecutions he did bring were against politicians who had had a falling out with party leaders. His tenure was marked by periodic controversies over his resistance to the death penalty and to the Police Department’s stop-and-frisk tactics.

In recent years, Mr. Johnson has drawn criticism from judges for long delays in bringing cases to trial in the Bronx and a persistent backlog of old cases. His conviction rate is also low in comparison with other boroughs, and he dismisses more cases than his peers.  

For his part, Mr. Johnson has argued these problems are endemic to the Bronx, where 80 percent of the population is Hispanic or black, where jurors often do not believe police witnesses, and where the calendar is clogged with cases from Rikers Island. 

Justice Clark, 53, is a Bronx native who grew up in a working-class home in the Soundview neighborhood and was the first in her family to go to college, attending Boston College and Howard University Law School. 

She became a prosecutor in Mr. Johnson’s office right after law school and served there for 12 years, becoming a supervisor, then a deputy chief, and earning a reputation as an unyielding prosecutor who was often exasperating to defense lawyers. She is married to a New York police detective.

“She was hard-nosed, a tough one,” Murray Richman, a longtime defense lawyer, said. “A serious prosecutor.”

In 1998, Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani appointed her to the criminal court and she became an acting Supreme Court justice, presiding over criminal trials. She won election as a Supreme Court justice in 2003 and was assigned to criminal cases; she was known for a no-nonsense approach and handing down long sentences. 

In 2012, she was elevated to the Appellate Division by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, with the support of Mr. Heastie, who had become party chairman.

Her name first surfaced as a possible replacement for Mr. Johnson in 2013, when there were reports that he was thinking about stepping down. At the time, Mr. Heastie had made his support for her clear to other party leaders.