President Trump announced Saturday the appointment of veteran Washington attorney Ty Cobb as a special counsel, positioning the former federal prosecutor as the White House point man for responding to the ongoing investigation into Russian election-meddling and allegations of collusion.

Mr. Cobb, a partner at the Washington law firm Hogan Lovells who specializes in white-collar crime, will oversee the White House response to the Russia issue and coordinate with Mr. Trump’s outside counsel, Marc Kasowitz.

For several weeks, White House press officials have directed all questions about Russian interference in the election to Mr. Kasowitz, who has provided limited response to the news media.

The hire of Mr. Cobb comes amid intensified scrutiny of the Trump campaign’s ties to Moscow following the revelation that Donald Trump Jr. had a meeting with a Russian lawyer during the presidential race. Emails released by the younger Mr. Trump showed that an intermediary set up the June 2016 meeting and alerted him that the Russian government was trying to help his father’s campaign.

Mr. Cobb is a fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers and a former federal prosecutor. He is a Harvard graduate and earned his law degree from Georgetown University Law Center.

According to the Hogan Lovells website, Mr. Cobb has a long history of counseling “White House personnel, Cabinet members, and elected officials,” including, among others, former Clinton administration member and later Fannie Mae director Eli Segal, Democratic National Committee fundraiser John Huang and former CIA official Mary McCarthy.

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