Mexican President Felipe Calderon on Monday named lawyer Fernando Francisco Gomez Mont as his new interior minister to succeed Juan Camilo Mourino, killed in a plane crash six days earlier, reported dpa.
Gomez Mont, like Calderon, belongs to the National Action Party, in which he has served in a number of posts.
Under the Mexican constitution, the interior minister is Mexico's second-highest government official after the president.
Mourino was killed in a crash of his official plane on November 4. Since the interior minister's job also includes fighting organized crime, many people in Mexico suspect that he may have fallen victim to the country's drugs mafia.
But the government has said that investigations so far have turned up no evidence of a possible attack on Mourino.