Obama names campaign insider as senior White House adviser

U.S. president-elect Barack Obama has named a close friend and campaign adviser to a top job at the White House.

Valerie Jarrett will be a senior adviser and assistant to Obama for intergovernmental relations, his transition team confirmed on Saturday.

Jarrett, 52, has a background in civic politics in Chicago, specializing in housing, transportation and health care.

As the Chicago mayor's deputy chief of staff in the 1980s, she hired a young lawyer to work at City Hall — Michelle Robinson — then Obama's fiancée and now his wife.

In other appointments, Philip Schiliro will be Obama's top representative to Congress.

Schiliro has worked in Congress for more than 25 years, many of which were spent as a top aide to longtime Rep. Henry Waxman, a Democrat from California.

Obama's team also formally announced that Ron Klain, a former chief of staff to Vice-President Al Gore, would serve in the same role for vice president-elect Joe Biden.