The two interim United States attorneys who will assume office in New York City on Friday will inherit major cases and pending decisions that seem likely to define the focus of their work over the next few years and could begin to shape their legacies.

Geoffrey S. Berman, a former federal prosecutor in Manhattan who will lead the United States attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York, will almost immediately oversee a string of high-profile public corruption trials, including the trial in two weeks of Joseph Percoco, a close friend and former top adviser to Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo. Mr. Percoco has pleaded not guilty.

The office will also be retrying two of New York’s once most powerful politicians — Sheldon Silver, a Democrat and the former speaker of the New York Assembly; and Dean G. Skelos, a Republican and the former State Senate majority leader. Both men were convicted and sentenced to long prison terms, but their convictions were overturned on appeal. The convictions were the capstone of the anti-corruption campaign led by Preet Bharara, the longtime United States attorney in Manhattan who was fired by the Trump administration in March.

In Brooklyn, one of the most important decisions that the new United States attorney for the Eastern District of New York, Richard P. Donoghue, will have to make is whether to charge New York City Police Officer Daniel Pantaleo with civil rights violations in connection with the death of Eric Garner on Staten Island on 2014.