RALEIGH — As outside investigators continue looking into the State Bureau of Investigation’s crime lab, the SBI director has moved to a new job within state government, North Carolina’s attorney general said Thursday.

SBI Director Robin Pendergraft will become senior deputy attorney general of the newly expanded Medicaid fraud unit, N.C. Attorney General Roy Cooper said Thursday. The new SBI director is Greg McLeod, who has worked as Cooper’s legislative liaison.

Pendergraft’s Medicaid fraud job is a new position, a spokeswoman for the state Justice Department said. The new salary for Pendergraft, who earns $113,293 a year as SBI director, has not been determined, spokeswoman Noelle Talley said.

Defense attorney David Rudolf, who has represented clients who have sued the SBI, called Pendergraft’s move an important change in the agency. But he said he had hoped the new director would be someone from outside North Carolina with experience running a similar agency.

“I don’t think all the blame can or should be laid at Robin’s feet,” he said Thursday. “Having said that, I don’t think she took the steps that were necessary to address the problems when she did become aware of them.”

Two former assistant directors of the FBI are looking into practices at the state crime lab. Their contract, originally set to expire in June, now goes through the end of the year.

They were called in after a ruling last February that a North Carolina man who served almost 17 years in prison for murder was innocent. The N.C. Innocence Commission heard evidence that complete blood test results had been excluded from crime lab reports presented at Greg Taylor’s trial. An SBI agent testified that not all lab results were provided to attorneys.

Pendergraft confirmed in February that the practice existed before she took over the SBI.

She told The Associated Press that while it was not the best practice, the intent was not to withhold information.

The Medicare fraud unit that Pendergraft will lead nearly doubled in size when the state budget included new positions. Cooper praised Pendergraft’s work, saying she “has been an excellent SBI director and law enforcement leader.”

Cooper appointed Pendergraft to run the SBI in 2001. McLeod has been with the state Justice Department as policy adviser and legislative counsel since 2003. Cooper says McLeod “will build on the SBI successes and continue with the improvements.”

Also assigned to the Medicaid fraud unit was Mark Isley, who is one of two SBI agents being sued by Floyd Brown, a mentally retarded man who was held for 14 years at a state mental hospital in Raleigh after being charged with murder. Rudolf is one of Brown’s attorneys.

Agents said Brown confessed to the murder, but his attorneys said the confession was beyond his abilities. They said Isley and another agent violated his rights to due process.