Facing growing political pressure, Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo announced on Thursday that he will appoint an independent counsel to take over his office’s investigation into the Paterson administration’s response to a domestic violence case.

Mr. Cuomo said he will appoint Judith S. Kaye, the former Chief Judge of New York, to lead the inquiry, along with an investigation into whether the governor lied when he was questioned by the state ethics commission into his solicitation of free Yankees World Series tickets.

The surprising development comes after Mr. Cuomo’s staff has already spent two weeks investigating the domestic violence case. Those staffers will now report to Ms. Kaye instead of Mr. Cuomo, who will recuse himself from both investigations.

“An investigation of a sitting governor of New York is a complex weighty matter indeed,” Mr. Cuomo said on a conference call, adding, “We have determined there are credible issues that need to be resolved. An immediate resolution of these matters does not now appear to be at hand.”

Mr. Cuomo is poised to formally announce his own bid for governor in the coming weeks, and managing the investigations of Mr. Paterson, a fellow Democrat, had become increasingly complicated.

Mr. Paterson dropped out of the race last month in the wake of the domestic violence scandal, but some black lawmakers have expressed concern that the controversy has been overblown and worry that the governor will not get a full hearing for his side of the story.

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