Jeff Prescott Replaces Julie Smith as Biden’s Deputy National Security Advisor

Vice President Joe Biden’s national security staff, a training ground for future senior White House talent, is undergoing big changes this week.

The Cable has learned Jeff Prescott will replace Julie Smith as Biden’s deputy national security advisor.

Prescott, special advisor for Asian Affairs at Office of the Vice President, joined the Biden team in 2010 as a White House fellow. Before that, he was deputy director of Yale’s China Law Center. An Asia hand through and through, Prescott accompanied Biden on his 2011 trip to Japan, Mongolia and China and advised him on his visits with then-Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping.

On Monday, some 100 to 150 of Smith’s current and former colleagues including Principal Deputy National Security Advisor Tony Blinken, recently appointed U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power and Biden’s National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan bid Smith farewell beside a “giant cake,” one source says could’ve fed 300 people.

In recent years, working on Biden’s national security team has become a career trampoline for a number of staffers. Most recently, Blinken succeeded Denis McDonough in the White House after McDonough moved to White House chief of staff. When Smith moved to Biden’s team, she replaced Brian McKeon who ultimately became chief of staff of the National Security Staff.

“Biden jokes that he doesn’t like losing his best people,” Smith told The Cable, “but it’s one team, one fight, so he sees it as a good thing.”

Before joining Biden’s team in April 2012, Smith served as principal director for the Europe and NATO policy at the Pentagon beginning in 2009. She told The Cable she’s taking the summer off to spend with her 3-year-old son who’s taking swimming lessons.

“There’s some truth to the ‘women can’t have it all thing,'” she said, referring to Ann-Marie Slaughter’s buzz-generating cover story in The Atlantic. “It’s time to re-introduce myself to my son. My husband has left work everyday to make sure our son wasn’t with the nanny 20 hours a day and he’s stayed home every night. I’m forever grateful for that so now I’ve got to take the bedtime routine.”