Jay Carney is resigning from his position as White House press secretary, President Obama announced Friday. 

Carney will be replaced by Josh Earnest, who worked with the Obama campaign during the president's first presidential run in 2008, according to The Washington Post. 

Carney, 49, joined the administration in late 2008 as a spokesman for Joe Biden. The former TIME White House correspondent replaced press secretary Robert Gibbs when he was promoted to the position in February 2011. 

Earnest, 39, has been Carney's top deputy, filling in for Carney during briefings at the White House and on Air Force One. Earnest will travel to Europe with Obama next week. 

Upon exiting his post, Carney said he is leaving the position to spend more time with his children and his wife Claire Shipman, a television journalist. Obama made the announcement in the briefing room while Carney was answering a question about the crisis in Ukraine. 

"Jay has become one of my closest friends and is a great press secretary and a great adviser," Obama said. "He's got good judgement, he has good temperament and he's got a good heart. And I'm going to miss him a lot. I will continue to rely on him as a friend, an adviser after he leaves to spend as much of his summer as he can with his kids before he decides what's next for him."

Carney is known as a disciplined, even-tempered man who rarely made mis-statements that were damaging to the administration. 

Obama also praised Earnest, recalling his work on his 2008 presidential campaign. 

"In that role, you'd find him spending an extra hour or two helping young staffers make phone calls or knock on doors," Obama said. "There was no task that was too small, no detail too unimportant for Josh to attend to."

While Earnest was long viewed as Carney's likely replacement, some reporters thought that Obama may replace him with Jen Psaki, a former White House deputy communications director and Obama's 2012 campaign spokeswoman. 

Nevertheless, Earnest is well-regarded among reporters and at the White House. 

"More often than not people say to me, 'You have the hardest job or you have one of the hardest jobs,'" Carney said. "And I'm not saying it's easy every day, but I love it. It's an important interaction that takes place here. It's not always pretty. It could certainly be better. But to be a part of it is an honor and a joy for me. So no matter how tough the briefing is, I walk out of here having been glad to stand here."