CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Cuyahoga County Sheriff Clifford Pinkney has resigned.

County spokeswoman Mary Louise Madigan confirmed that Pinkney tendered his resignation Friday and said that the county will begin an immediate search for his replacement. She added that the county “thanks him for his long and distinguished service.”

Pinkney resigned “for personal reasons” from the post that paid an annual salary of $125,000. His last day will be Aug. 2, Madigan said. Attempts to reach Pinkney Friday afternoon were not successful.

Pinkney, who became Cuyahoga County’s first black sheriff in April 2015, previously worked as the county’s chief deputy. He replaced former Sheriff Frank Bova.

The resignation comes at a tumultuous time for the sheriff’s office, which oversees day-to-day operations at the Cuyahoga County Jail which is the subject of local, state and federal investigations. Those investigations stem from series of eight deaths that occurred at the jail in mid-to-late 2018. Another inmate died in recent weeks.

The U.S. Marshals Service uncovered “inhumane” conditions at the jail after an inspection that followed the first seven deaths in 2018. Since then, former warden Eric Ivey was demoted and indicted, along with former jail director Ken Mills.

Pinkney’s departure is the latest in a series of resignations of high-level employees in Cuyahoga County Executive Armond Budish’s administration that began when prosecutors launched a corruption probe into the county’s IT department.

That investigation pivoted to focus on the jail after a string of inmate deaths and the Nov. 21 U.S. Marshals Service report.

Investigators with the Ohio Attorney General’s Office, which is now leading the probe into the jail, have sought records and testimony from Mills, who was supposed to report directly to Pinkney, and Pinkney’s direct supervisor, Public Safety Director Brandy Carney.

So far, prosecutors haven’t subpoenaed any of Pinkney’s records.

A lawsuit filed Tuesday by former jail medical supervisor Gary Brack says that Pinkney was cut out of decision-making at the jail.

Pinkney told Brack that he disliked Mills but said he was “powerless to correct (Mills’) interference because of Budish,” according to the lawsuit. Mills, according to a Cuyahoga County inspector general’s report, made racist comments about Pinkney.

Brack’s lawsuit also recounts a meeting with Pinkney after an October 2017 Cuyahoga County Council budget hearing in which councilmembers questioned the sheriff about the administration’s plan to privatize nursing at the jail.

The lawsuit says Pinkney knew Mills was the driving force behind the attempt to switch contracts from MetroHealth to a company called NaphCare. But he told council he didn’t know who was seeking the switch because he feared backlash from Budish.

Corruption investigators later sought records about NaphCare during a Feb. 14 raid on Budish’s office, according to a copy of the search warrant previously obtained by cleveland.com.

Brack’s lawsuit is the latest of several filed against the county for the jail’s conditions, including one that calls for the jail to operate under a consent decree that would dictate mandatory reforms through an agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice and the oversight of a federal judge. Cleveland Municipal Judge Michael Nelson has also called for a consent decree.

Five other high-ranking county officials have resigned in recent months, including

Budish Chief-of-Staff Earl Leiken, Law Director Robert Triozzi, Director of Employee and Labor Relations Egdilio Morales, Chief Technology Officer Michael Young and interim fiscal officer Angela Rich.

Several jail officials have also resigned, including Mills a week before the release of the U.S. Marshals report. Then-interim jail director and chief deputy sheriff George Taylor retired in April 5. Ivey was demoted after the county inspector general found he violated the county’s nepotism policy.

The top jail positions are being held by those on interim status. A new jail director, Rhonda Gibson, was hired in April but has not yet started working in her new role.

Pinkney is Cleveland native, who graduated from Cleveland Heights High School in 1980. He began working for the sheriff’s department in 1991, where he worked in a variety of roles, including as a detective with the FBI Violent Crimes Task Force.