U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Monday paved the way for this week's execution of death row inmate Walter Leroy Moody for the 1989 pipe bombing that killed a federal judge.

Last week Moody asked the U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals to stay his lethal injection execution, which is set for 6 p.m. Thursday at Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore. Moody recently argued the federal government which convicted him first on non-death penalty charges should have him in custody instead of the state.

The appeals court held a hearing Thursday but has not yet ruled.

Justice Department attorneys at that hearing and in written briefs have said that they have had an agreement since the 1990s to allow Moody to serve his sentence in Alabama. Then on Monday the Justice Department filed another brief on behalf of Sessions.

"Before the United States filed its amicus brief in this case and presented its position at oral argument, the Attorney General, Jefferson B. Sessions, III, informed the undersigned Deputy Assistant Attorney General, Matthew S. Miner, that the United States waives its right to exclusive custody of petitioner Walter Leroy Moody, Jr. and consents to his custody in Alabama for purposes of carrying out the capital sentence imposed on Moody in Alabama," the brief filed Monday states.

Moody's attorneys filed a motion on Monday seeking a hearing on the federal custody issue.

"Petitioner Walter Leroy Moody Jr., pursuant to 28 U.S.C. SS 2241(c), respectfully requests that this Court bring him before it to inquire as to why his federal sentences have been interrupted in violation of his rights to life and equal protection under the Fifth Amendment's Due Process Clause, which unlawful act will result in his premature death at the hands of the State of Alabama on April 19, 2018," the motion states.

Moody, 83, is the oldest inmate on Alabama Death Row.

He was convicted in the death of U.S. 11th Circuit of Appeals Judge Robert Vance Sr., who was killed Dec. 16, 1989 in a blast from a pipe bomb hidden in a package sent to the judge's Mountain Brook home. The judge's wife, Helen, was seriously injured in the blast.

In 1991, a federal jury convicted Moody of 71 charges related to the pipe-bomb murders of Vance and Georgia civil rights attorney Robert E. Robinson, who also was killed in a pipe-bomb blast two days after the judge. That federal trial was conducted in Minnesota. Moody was placed on death row after a jury convicted him of capital murder at a trial in Alabama five years later. The jury recommended 11-1 that the death penalty be imposed and the judge agreed.