IndyMac Bancorp said Friday that its top lawyer, Terrence Hughes, is leaving the mortgage lender.

Hughes, who joined the company in July of 2005, made the decision several months ago that he would be leaving, an IndyMac spokesman said in an e-mailed statement. The departure was said to be on “great terms” the statement said.

The news comes after the company announced Thursday that the concern over Alt-A loans, which are loans made to borrowers with lack of credit and necessarily bad credit, and subprime lending has been “overblown.”

To quell concern, the Pasadena-based lender, which was the nation’s largest Alt-A lender in 2006, released numbers that showed the lender was in line with the national average for 60 day defaults, at about 1.75 percent, slightly higher than the industry’s 1.67 percent national average.

Shares in IndyMac fell 69 cents, or 2 percent, to $32.05 during afternoon trading Friday on the New York Stock Exchange.